Board cease and desist writing checks

Several questions/concerns in community about the board approving and writing checks without documentation. These are hundreds of thousands sums. Can a cease and desist letter be issued to freeze the assets until a new board is in place

Many payments in the hundreds of thousands paid without invoices. These are not routine maintenance or budgeted items.

How long has this been going on and did you review the board meeting minutes to see if the payments and/or authorization to spend the money are documented there? You said these weren't routine maintenance or budgeted items - can you tell what they were for? Does anyone remember any work being done and when that might be connected to the payments? What HAS the board said when asked about all this?

Depending on how long this has been going on, there may be some payments that can't be justified, and depending on how long ago they were made, you might be out of luck in getting that money back. You may also be dealing with former board members who were around when the checks were cut - if any are still around, has anyone spoken to them?

The association still has bills to be paid, so you can't just shut off the money until you recall this board and elect another one. In fact, the recall and election of a new board need to happen first, in that order, so I hope you have people ready and willing to step up. As I always say, YOU may need to be one of them. If you haven't already done so, check your documents to see what needs to be done to get a special meeting called. Usually, this calls for a certain percentage of homeowners to sign a petition calling for a meeting. Your petition needs to specify what the purpose of the meeting will be. Once you have the percentage, the board should schedule a special meeting - your documents may also specify how soon the meeting is to occur, so pay attention to dates and deadlines.

I suspect this board may not quietly go in the night, so it wouldn't hurt to get an attorney on standby. He or she could also help you prepare a plan if the recall is successful, and therefore, you'll need to pass the hat and hire your own. The association may already have an attorney, but he or she represents the association and the board (with respect to their duties as board members, not personally). You'll need a new board to give that attorney direction - assuming you want to keep him or her.

If you succeed, the next step will be to identify bills that have to be paid to keep the association running (that includes depositing money into reserves), so your attorney may be able to help you establish procedures to suspend all other projects until things are straightened out. Then you'll need to hire an independent accountant to do an audit. There are different types of audits, depending on what you need, so do your research and then talk to prospects. Put the current property manager and now former board on notice their cooperation is expected and if they don't, the association attorney (whoever that is) will be instructed to explore possible legal action (civil and criminal) against them.

In case, this isn't clear, understand that none of this will happen overnight and there may be a number of bumps along the way, financial and otherwise. Keep the homeowners informed and when you're done, work with the property manager in establishing internal checks and balances to ensure this won't happen again. Yes, that may require the association to hire a new one, which is another conversation. There are several on this website about the ups and downs of doing that, but you're not there yet. Good luck to you.