local
The Whistleblower blog was started in 2008. Look for posts by these contributors: James Eli Shiffer, Jane Friedmann and Maria Elena Baca. | Check out the Whistleblower archive.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter. Find our watchdog and investigative work at The Investigators.
The Star Tribune's journalists need your help blowing the whistle in Minnesota. Contact us here.
resize text 
find us on Facebook
follow on Twitter
subscribe via RSS
Posts about Buyer beware
'Get rich slow’ broker is facing discipline
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: December 18, 2012 - 10:16 AM
A Minnetonka real estate broker whose “get rich slow” investment scheme persuaded lenders to issue more than $6 million in loans based on fraudulent applications should be disciplined by the Department of Commerce, an administrative law judge decided this month.
The department had suspended Steven R. Carver ’s real estate licenses in July until a judge could rule on the allegations.
Carver and his company Carver & Associates Real Estate led seminars in the mid-2000s that recruited “no money down” investors to act as buyers in rental property purchases. He inflated purchase prices and buyers received kickbacks at closing that they used to make down payments on those or additional properties, the judge’s decision said. Many of those properties went into foreclosure.
Carver gave false information to the state on three separate license applications and owes $155,000 in real-estate-related judgments, the judge found.
Did the gas pump rip her off?
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: November 20, 2012 - 11:05 AMRoseville reader Mary Reyes pulled into a Little Canada gas station recently to refill her 2003 Honda Pilot’s 18-gallon tank. It was one-eighth to one-quarter full, and the gas warning light hadn’t activated.
“When my tank is at this level, I consistently put in 16 to 16½ gallons to fill it up,” Reyes said. This time she watched as the pump’s display “passed the 16-gallon mark, then the 17-gallon mark, then the 18-gallon mark, finally stopping at 19.063 gallons,” she said.
When she mentioned the anomaly to the cashier, he said, “All gas stations do this.”
Reyes says she felt ripped off. “I just paid an extra $9.48 for gas I didn’t receive.”
If you suspect a gas pump is out of calibration, click here to report it to the Department of Commerce's Weights and Measures division.
Have you encountered a similar experience?
“Scareware” sellers must pay $163M
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: October 3, 2012 - 5:00 PM“Scareware” sellers must pay $163M
A Maryland businesswoman who “tricked customers into thinking their computers were infected with malicious software” was ordered by a federal judge to join three others in paying $163 million in restitution, the Federal Trade Commission announced this week.
An FTC suit charged Kristy Ross , an officer of Ukraine-based Innovative Marketing Inc., with placing ads on popular websites that offered a “system scan” to detect security problems. The scan “invariably detected a host of malicious files” and then sold bogus software for $30 to $100 to more than 1 million customers.
Ross was permanently prohibited from engaging in deceptive marketing and from marketing security software and software that interferes with customers’ computer use.
Business charges $89 for $10 deed
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: October 3, 2012 - 9:48 AMAfter refinancing his house recently, Mark Meinhardt of Eagan received what looked like a bill from the “Local Records Office” with the urgent message: “Important property information. Respond promptly.” It also had a warning about tampering with the mail.
But it wasn’t a government document. For $89, LRO will send a copy of the deed as well as a “property profile” with the owner’s name and address and some neighborhood statistics.
The Dakota County Property Taxation and Records department charges $10 for a certified copy of a deed.
The company’s return address is a rented mailbox in St. Paul. An LRO employee wouldn’t reveal the business’ actual location, but an Internet search indicates the business operates locally — throughout the country.
Dad's debt ties up student's funds
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: September 24, 2012 - 10:43 AMThis is a blogpost of the original article, which ran on Sunday. Comment below or click here to go to the article and discussion.
When Gloria James, 17, received a $500 scholarship and a few checks at her high-school graduation party in June, she deposited them in her savings account.
Ten days later, when James went to her Brooklyn Center credit union to make a withdrawal, she was told she couldn't.
The funds had been garnished to pay a debt.
"I was confused at first; I don't owe anybody money," said James, who moved with her family to the United States from Liberia when she was 9 and is now a University of Minnesota freshman.
It turns out the debt is her father's. Citibank of South Dakota obtained a judgment against him in January 2011 for $4,304.
When James opened her savings account at 16, banking rules required that she to do so with an adult. With her father's name on the account, the money in it was fair game for any debt collector after him for funds.
In the past few years, state courts have favored creditors with decisions that make it easier to garnish funds from joint bank accounts, with no obligation to give non-debtors a heads-up.
A 2010 Minnesota Supreme Court decision interpreted state law to say a creditor may assume that the entire amount in a joint account belongs to the debtor unless someone can prove otherwise.
Due process takes a back seat
Due process is a constitutional principle that says a person has the right to be given sufficient notice of the taking of their property by legal means.
The collection agency, Rausch, Sturm, Israel, Enerson & Hornik, LLC, a Wisconsin firm with an office in Minneapolis, didn't notify James of the garnishment or her right to argue that the money was hers. Nor did her credit union.
But they weren't required to. Recent court rulings have supported the view that a non-debtor is given sufficient notice of a garnishment if the joint account's debtor is notified.
According to James, her father, Emmanuel James, of Brooklyn Center, failed to share the notification with her.
"My dad doesn't communicate with me. So I would have gone to the store, picked up my school supplies, swiped my card and found nothing there," James said.
Emmanuel James did not respond to Whistleblower's request for comment.
To make matters worse, officials of the collection agency refused to speak to James, she said.
They wanted to talk to her father instead, "despite the fact that I'm the primary holder of the account," James wrote in a letter to the firm.
"[James'] name isn't on the judgment, so if the creditor has a policy of not discussing a debt with a non-debtor, it is understandable they wouldn't talk to her," said Randall Ryder, a Minneapolis lawyer who represents consumers in collections cases.
Jason A. Adams, an attorney for the collection agency, declined to speak to Whistleblower about the company's policies.
Determination pays off
James hopes to pursue either biology or law at the U and is paying college expenses with grants, scholarships and loans.
While in high school, James was enrolled in Upward Bound, a federal program with the stated purpose of providing "fundamental support to participants in their preparation for college entrance." The program serves students from low-income families or families in which neither parent has a college degree.
As part of the program, James interned over the summer in the office of Hennepin County District Judge William R. Howard. He encouraged her to write to the debt collector, describing the situation and how she felt about it, James said.
She spent weeks researching garnishment law, crafted a two-page letter and sent it to Adams on Aug. 17.
James then obtained documentation of what happened and contacted the Volunteer Lawyers Network, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that serves low-income clients.
James was assigned to attorney Ryder. On Sept. 6, Ryder sent a letter to Adams saying, "We have a problem here."
Adams responded that he had ordered the release of James' funds on Aug. 22, five days after James mailed her letter to him, Ryder said.
"So I really didn't do anything," Ryder said. "[James] took the initiative. She took charge of it and solved it on her own."
In the end, James is out $20, the amount the bank charged to freeze her account and send her father a notice.
She's also on the hook for a bit extra in interest payments from increasing one of her student loans to pay for supplies, not realizing her funds had been released.
James said her credit union told her that when it released her funds, it sent out a notice -- to her father.
ADVERTISEMENT
recent posts
- Company fined for too much sewage
- State: Tobacco buyer evaded taxes
- 'Get rich slow’ broker is facing discipline
- Area nursing homes cited for violations
- Caregiver had sex with client
- Arbitrator upholds deputy’s dismissal
- Garage is eyesore no more
- FTC goes after FTC impersonator
- Salon fined for lax sanitation practices
- Man put on stand, though lawyer was absent
- Fines accrue, but north Minneapolis garage remains an eyesore
- Did the gas pump rip her off?
- Closed bar owes large sales-tax bill
- Cigarette taxes take her breath away
- Insurer now willing to pay flood claim, homeowner says
- Frustration at long waits in a Minneapolis precinct
- 'Vote No' van parked too close to poll
- Election judge instructions go too far
- Some voters may be asked for ID
Post By Category
- Kansas sperm donor lawsuit could easily happen in Minnesota ...
- Water main break cuts off service to much of downtown Minneapolis
- May 26, 1911: Water main bursts, floods North Side
- Crash in Bloomington halts light rail
- 'Without a medical school that is moving ahead, none of us will make it.'
- Andrew weighs bid for mayor
- High-level Griefers
ADVERTISEMENT
inside the StarTribune
-
425 Portland Av. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55488
(612) 673-4000
- Company
- Subscriber Services
- Website
- Buy Ads
- Store
- Connect with Us
© 2013 StarTribune. All rights reserved.
StarTribune.com is powered by Limelight Networks
Newspaper Subscriptions
eEdition
RSS
Newsletters