Article Courtesy of Daytona-Beach News-Journal

By LYDA LONGA
Published Friday, September 22, 2006

A chunk of the insurance money meant for repairs to a hurricane-damaged Ponce Inlet condo complex instead went into the pocket of the association's president, town police investigators said Thursday.

Kathleen Blackman went from her pleasant beachfront home at the Ponce Inlet Villas Condominium to the bleak walls of the Volusia County Branch Jail on Wednesday after she was charged with grand theft.

Town Investigator Max Binz said she stole more than $80,000 from the condominium association's insurance settlement fund received for condo damages after the hurricanes of 2004.

The 52-year-old Blackman was still at the jail late Thursday afternoon, held on $40,000 bail.

"This is the first time we've had something like this reported down here," Binz said Thursday, referring to the theft. "The money was going for her own personal use."

Exactly what Blackman was using the cash for is still under investigation, Binz said.

According to a police report, Blackman was siphoning money from the condominium association's insurance claim accounts, and feeding it into a personal account she had opened at the same bank. Association officials began noticing something was awry in April when they had trouble accessing the accounts, Binz said.

"The insurance company was supposed to have sent us five checks and after paying deductions, would have totaled $254,557," condominium secretary Pamela Blackadar said. "But we had only received three checks."

When condominium treasurer Susan Gordon confronted Blackman about the condo association's suspicions regarding the missing checks, Blackman told her the money belonged to her and "it was gone," according to the report.

In addition , Blackman had told bank officials that she, not Gordon the treasurer, was the only one authorized to receive information about the condo association's money or have access to the accounts, police said.

When a handful of the condominium's residents asked Gordon for a summary of the money the condominium received from the insurance company for the hurricane damage claim, Gordon told investigators she repeatedly asked Blackman for the information, but was always rebuffed with excuses, according to the report.

Blackadar said her fiance, Robert Alexander, began suspecting there were problems when repairmen hired by Blackman did shoddy work on roof and siding damage left behind by Hurricanes Charlie and Frances.

"They thought the work the repairmen were doing was inferior," Blackadar said. "There was a lot of patchwork."

Alexander, who has lived at the condominium for about 10 years, said he and many other residents are "devastated" that the money is missing.

Along with building damage, the money was to go toward landscaping torn up by the storms.

"That was our hurricane damage money," he said. "She didn't have to do this."

When Investigator Binz interviewed Blackman before she was taken to the county jail, he asked her why she took the money.

"She stated that she did not know what to do and that she needed the money and this was the only way that she could get it," Binz said in the report.

Blackman told police she would refinance her condo unit -- which property records show was purchased in 2004 for $375,000 -- and pay back the residents of the Ponce Inlet Villas Condominium.