Quorum Case Files

Two condo families, two states, the same complaint: a neighbor's cigarette smoke pouring into the home of a child or an adult with asthma. One association tried reasonable middle-ground fixes and won at the Sixth Circuit. The other shrugged — and a California jury put 60 percent of the emotional-distress damages on the HOA, more than on the smokers themselves. Where a community association's duty in an inter-unit nuisance actually starts and stops.

In a Dana Point community where buyers paid lot premiums for ocean views, the CC&Rs said all trees get trimmed to the roofline. As neighbors' palm trees swallowed the views, the HOA board decided "all trees" didn't mean palms — and a California appellate court disagreed, ordering the association to enforce its own documents and leaving it with a reported half-million-dollar bill for attorney fees. Season premiere: why a community association board can't interpret its way out of a covenant, and the three ways every board fails a neighbor-versus-neighbor war.

Las Vegas, 2003–2015. The largest HOA-fraud prosecution in American history. A construction boss paid straw buyers to purchase condos just so they could run for association boards, rigged the elections, and once his people held the majority, steered the defect lawsuits to his attorney and the repair contracts to his own company — a $58 million scheme that ended in forty-two convictions. The season finale: when the criminals don’t evade the controls, they manufacture the board itself.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.

Miami-Dade, FL, 2018–2022. A board president and her faction seized control of one of Florida’s largest associations — some 6,500 homes — and ran its money through phantom shell vendors billing for work no one ever did, a scheme prosecutors put north of $11 million. She pleaded guilty to racketeering and drew seven years, reported to be the longest sentence ever handed to an HOA president. What board capture looks like at scale, and why only an outside audit breaks it.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.

Charles County, MD. When the president and the treasurer act together, the usual two-officer check is worthless — and here association money flowed to a subcontractor that was really the treasurer’s spouse’s company, more than $100,000 over at least five years. The treasurer pleaded guilty to misappropriation. The related-party vendor, and why an outside audit is the only backstop against collusion.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.

Marion, IA, 2011–2016. The treasurer opened a second bank account in the association’s own name, funneled the money in, and every year handed the board a treasurer’s report he had invented from scratch. The reports balanced; the account was a ghost — $124,525 over five years, ending in a federal wire-fraud conviction. The cleanest separation-of-duties lesson in the season.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.

Hurricane, UT, ~2016–2022. The betrayal moves next door. The volunteer treasurer forged her fellow board members’ signatures, dropped neighbors’ dues checks into her own account, and worked four association accounts across three banks for roughly six years before anyone noticed — at least $232,000, ending in a guilty plea. The trusted neighbor, and the missing second signature.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.

Pearland, TX, 2013–2017. At a master-planned community outside Houston, the on-site manager kept approving invoices for pool equipment that never arrived and taking half the payment back — $421,519 in all. The community had hired a national management company and assumed that was the safeguard; it wasn’t, because the manager was theirs. A guilty plea to federal wire fraud, and the reason a receiving control matters as much as an approval.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.

Warrenton, VA, 2018–2024. One firm managed the money for more than seventy Virginia associations — so when a client tried to leave, the only way to pay it back was to quietly drain the others. About $1.1 million moved into the management company’s own accounts, hidden behind bank statements she retouched by hand, until a guilty plea to wire fraud and a two-year sentence. The case for segregating the manager from the money she holds.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.

Grand Junction, 2015–2018. A Colorado management-company owner didn’t stumble into theft — she chose it, selecting the associations whose boards never checked their own accounts, then altering the statements she mailed them so the balance climbed on paper while the cash walked out the back. More than $250,000 from twenty-three client HOAs, ending in a federal conviction for wire fraud and filing false returns. The season premiere, and its whole thesis in one case: the statement has to come from the bank, not the manager.

Quorum Case Files reconstructs documented cases of HOA, condo, and community association governance gone wrong — built from court records and public filings, told as a conversation. From Quorum Press.