How to make a Mother of Two homeless and take her life-savings?
Just ask the Board of Directors of Chimney Lakes !
An Investigative Report by Jan Bergemann 
Posted 11 - 24 - 2002

Just when a single mother of two thought her dream of giving her kids a home of their own was coming true, the whole "house of cards" collapsed. Not only is the family now homeless, the mother lost as well all the family's savings, namely $ 6.000.00 to "buying" the house and
$ 9.000.00 for repairs and related cost to the new home.

For your better understanding of the whole situation, here is the Chain of Events :

11/01/2000     CLOA purchased the property on the courthouse steps.
02/13/2001     Mortgage holder Salomon Brother Realty served CLOA with a Civil Action
                         Summons giving them 20 days notice to respond.
04/17/2001     CLOA sold the property to Jason and Rochelle Broughton. The Quick Claim
                         Deed was prepared by Jeffrey Tomassetti, Attorney at Law, and signed by
                         Ronald L. Crosby, board president.  An amount of $200 for preparing the deed
                         was charged by Jeffrey Tomassetti to the account of Chimney Lake.
04/08/2001    A deposit was made in the CLOA Bank Account for $6,000. A formal request for 
                         a copy of the record showing the transaction on the CLOA books was made.  The
                         request was denied.
04/20/2001     An entry was made on the account of the former owner, Lonnie Parker to clear his
                         debt to CLOA. This in itself is a violation of the governing documents.
06/29/2001     When CLOA failed to meet the 20 day response time, Salomon Brothers Realty
                         filed Civil Action  and purchased the house for $ 100.00
08/09/2001     Salomon Brother Realty filed for certificate of Title.

01/20/2002     Mother of Two was made homeless

The documents are are self-explanatory. According to the court documents the board of CLOA, through Betty C. Johnston - the former property manager - was already informed in February of 2001 that the mortgage holder filed a Civil Action Suit, reclaiming the property, rightfully theirs. But in April, two month after the official notification, they accepted a payment of $ 6.000.00 from Rochelle Broughton and sold her the house, telling her she would need to made contact with the mortgage holder to make arrangements to pay the remaining balance on the property. They knew at that time, according to the court documents, that the house wasn't rightfully theirs to sell. Adding further to the confusion, the association attorney Jeffrey Tomassetti prepared a Quick Claim Deed, charging the association $200.00.

Once again, as usual, when dealing with a Homeowners Association, the people, who made the mistake, were not the ones to be punished. A mother of two young children, formerly employed by the association as a secretary, lost her dream home and she and her two kids were kicked out on the street! She lost her life-savings! Besides paying $6,000.00 to a seller who didn't own the property, she as well lost more than $9,000.00, all her savings; money used for repairing what she thought was their "dream home".

In addition, the guilty parties so far refused to make any kind of restitution and the mother is left penniless out on the street. Two young kids are drawn into this disaster, causing them a lot of emotional distress. Knowing that the mother doesn't have the financial resources to fight for her rights, she received an offer, which can only be considered ridiculous. They wanted to reimburse her a balance of about $2,300.00, trying to charge her rent for a home they never owned and totally disregarding the $9,000.00 she invested in the property in good faith. And to top off this outrageous offer, they wanted her as well to pay association dues for the time she lived in that house.

Hopefully, she can finds someone to fight for her rights and holds the people, whose "negligence" caused the whole disaster, responsible for all the damages. Something like this shouldn't go unpunished in our society!
 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE INTERESTING STORIES ABOUT CHIMNEY LAKE