Condo Fraud By Sandy Steffen, President of MTCC 764
In late 2009, our property management firm’s principal told us that its subcontractor, who handled our condo’s day-to-day operations and financial affairs, had handled client monies inappropriately and had falsified records to conceal that fact.
How our small condo recovered from a massive fraud
So what did we do? First steps (crisis management): • Circulated a written update informing unit owners of what we found out; • Went to the bank, closed all accounts that the property manager had access to, got a printout of all our financial transactions and copies of cancelled cheques, and opened new accounts; • Went to the police and reported the fraud; • Went to property management firm to retrieve all uncashed cheques and whatever records they had. Requested return of all our documents; • Called our insurer; • Went to another condo that may have also been affected and spoke with their president to gather any additional information available • Found a condominium lawyer; and • Fired our property management firm and issued an RFP (Request For Proposal) for new management. CONDOVOICE SPRING 2015
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ILLUSTRATION BY STEVEN GUARNACCIA
Back From the Brink
We soon discovered that that the subcontractor had: • Stolen $250K of our money; • Forged my signature on cheques totaling $400K; • Left us overdrawn by $170K …and we are only a 15-unit condominium!