The State of Florida has been slow, to say the least on cracking down on unlicensed Condominium and Homeowner Associations Property Manager activity. We have a huge problem in the South Florida area of individuals presenting themselves as Licensed Community Association Managers, when in fact they are not. Here is how the scheme works and hopefully you as a unit owner don't fall into this growing corruption and the current Board of Director members avoid being sued by unit owners for failing to perform their due diligence of verifying a property manager as truly licensed with the State of Florida. 1)The individual will open an office, which all they need is a business license from the City or County government, the cost ranges from $75.00 to $100.00 for a permit. 2) They send out advertisements to local communities and actually get the list of Board members from the State of Florida and send a direct mailing to the Board of Directors. In some cases place advertisements on their vehicles or residence. 3) They visit Board of Director Members at their homes and spread rumors about their current property manager, which the current property manager hopefully he/she is fully licensed and the hard part to understand is, if the Board Members refuse, they find other unit owners and convince them to recall the current Board Members with the agreement that since these unlicensed property managers will get the new management contract. Yes, I said contract, they are so bold that they have a contract drawn up by Association Attorneys, so hungry for business that they don't even take the time to check if the individual is licensed or not. 4) They will attend your meetings, lie to the community of their experience, prepare a budget, recommend contractors, which they control. They even run your elections and through the whole time with managing your property, you never meet or talk to the licensed Community Association Manager, you don't even know if they even exist because they are not listed on the Corporation document for the management company, but they are listed on the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation because they lied at the time of application and claimed that the controlling Licensed Community Association Manager is at least 10% or greater owner. The Licensed Community Association Manager is not even an employee of the management company.
5) They commit election fraud, budget fraud, and steal your money. They bring in their landscaper, pool company, security guard company, janitorial, and so on. Each company is giving the unlicensed property manager a kickback every time they perform service at your community. They even replace your current insurance agent, with their insurance agent, without you even knowing using an assignment of agent form. 6) They raise your maintenance fee, create special assessments, and those unit owners that question them, become the target of insults, violations and even have received a "Cease and Desist" letter from the Association Attorney that represents the Association. Think about it, you are a shareholder of a corporation, for those that don't know, the community is a corporation and you are a shareholder and you receive a letter to cease and desist for asking questions about your corporation (Association). They will claim you are harassing the property manager. It's real and it's happening every day in South Florida. You have these criminals working as unlicensed property managers at various communities, it's not just one community, it's hundreds. Association annual budget range from $100,000.00 to the millions, ask yourself this question, how is this permitted to happen? Protect yourself and click on our website the link " verify license and type in the manager's name, the site is run by the State of Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulations. The above is a brief description of how the fraud is played out, many times an Attorney helps them commit this crime of fraud. The very sad part is that it just might be happening in your community and you did not know about it or you don't care to get involved, but you are paying every month for the fraud and putting your hard-earned money into the pockets of individuals that can't pass a 100 question test and background check. I hope this educates a lot of owners and keeps Board members from litigation and/or Police investigation into fraud.
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