Danna D III Principals Plead Guilty to Mortgage Fraud!

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.  Editorial note:  the photos were taken almost a year ago and it is unknown if the property is in identical, better, or worse condition at this time.

Julia Rozhansky and Zack Dyab, two of the principals in the Danna D III corporation and American Choice Lending, pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud in federal court this week.  Danna D was a series of LLC's (roman numerals I - VI were also used for properties at various locations, although most NoMi houses were under the III entity), and Rozhansky and Dyab had planned to buy "hundreds of rental properties in north Minneapolis," according to an MPR report that broke the story of their criminal activities.  Through wire fraud and mortgage fraud, they stiffed investors of over $2.5 million and caused more than two dozen foreclosures in north Minneapolis alone.

This is a pattern we've unfortunately seen all too often; predatory investors coming in and buying properties on the cheap, using fraudulent means to qualify, not pulling proper permits, doing substandard (if any) maintenance, and ultimately losing scores of homes to foreclosure when the house of cards collapses under its own weight of malfeasance.  At least we're seeing some of these crooks finally get jail time, but the impact on our community will likely outlast their prison terms.

And when fraud is committed at one of these properties, it's not just a one-time occurrence.  The neglect of a property often makes it unappealing to anyone but the next predatory investor.  Or the first fraudster wants to sell at an over-inflated price, and the only ones qualifying for something at that level are the ones committing the next round of slumlording mortgage fraud.  That is exactly what happened with one of the properties listed in the indictment (the plea agreement isn't available online yet, but I will publish it once it is, and the sentencing hasn't been scheduled).

1417 Logan Avenue North was owned first by Danna D III, and then...

Google is My Friend in Searching for Slumlord Data

Post and photo of a Bashir Moghul vacant lot by the Hawthorne Hawkman

I'm going for a Guinness World Record here.  Can I make someone fall asleep using fewer words in one sentence than ever before?  Here goes: In a Google search for a certain slumlord, a rather interesting spreadsheet with housing data came my way.

No, wait!  This really IS important for NoMi and even for all of Minneapolis.   Don't lose consciousness just yet, please.  The document in question is the 2009 Board of Appeal and Equalization list of applications for reductions in assessed property values.  Look, I'm sorry.  No matter how I try and present this stuff, it just comes off as verbal Ambien.  So let's jump right to the juicy stuff, shall we?

Bashir Moghul.  Quite a few Moghuls, actually.  Danna D III.  Property owners we haven't covered on NoMi blogs yet, such as My Truong, Steven Meldahl, and Patrick C. Burns come up quite a bit here too.  It's not known if any of those last four are problematic landlords, but in my experience, very few people or businesses seem to manage that many properties well.

Furthermore, until regular citizens are able to search property records with the name of the owner as a search criteria, lists like this may be the best way to determine something close to the full list of properties owned by a particular person.  Why?  Well, I'm glad you asked. It's because...

Replacement Windows and Closed Porches - A Slummy Pictorial

 

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.

Just in case readers weren't convinced by my last post about the effects of things like replacement windows, I've gone through the Hawkman slumlord archives to retrieve some other prime examples of what happens when people like Bashir Moghul, Mahmood Khan, Paul Koenig, and those behind the Danna D III LLC get their hands on properties in NoMi. I even had someone with more architectural knowledge look at these pictures as well, to confirm what it was that I was seeing.

First up is Bashir Moghul. The photo above displays the exact kind of windows that little children are prone to fall out of. Nice work Bashir.

This one was at one point in time an open porch. Not only was it closed off, it was done without anything more aesthetically or structurally sound than plywood.

If you look to the side here, you can see where someone took out a double-hung sash and replaced it with a plywood and vinyl heap of ugliness.

Here's another closed porch and similar mistreatment of the second-floor window.

Look at the first floor windows there.  He's really not even trying at this point.

At least here, Moghul kept the original openings intact.  If someone were to come along and restore decent windows, that job wouldn't be so hard.

Here though, he didn't even bother to keep any openings.  Several windows are just covered up.

The little white diamonds under the plywood are the architectural equivalent of a middle finger.

And here we see what many slumlords have done, removing or covering up a second-story arched window frame.

Several more slumlord shots are coming right up...