by Thomas Breen | Oct 2, 2019 7:52 am

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Posted to: Housing, Legal Writes, Dwight

A former property manager at the 88-unit Seabury Cooperative Housing allegedly stole at least $15,000 in cash security deposits and rent payments from at least four different tenants.

Meanwhile, tenants were getting eviction notices.

At least one apparent victim sees a connection. She is arguing that the eviction lawsuit she’s currently facing, one of 15 eviction suits filed by Seabury in the past two years, stems from that former property manager’s theft and not from her alleged nonpayment of rent.

Seabury is one of the city’s last surviving tenant-run cooperatives that were founded with federal government help a half century ago.

According to a July 2018 police report filed by the current property manager at Seabury Cooperative Housing at 400 Elm St., a former property manager named Lilliana Yaccarino allegedly stole cash payments from three different tenants. A fourth tenant, Demara Williams, filed a separate police report in July 2019 alleging Yaccarino also stole from her.

According to New Haven Police Department Officer Krzysztof Ruszczyk’s 2018 report, which the Independent received through a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act Request, Seabury’s current property manager, Nasha Rhone of the West Hartford-based Faith Asset Management company, said that an audit of the company’s finances in June 2018 revealed “a discrepancy in the rent collection funds.”

Yaccarino was responsible for collecting rent, Rhone told the police officer, and had worked at Seabury for the previous four years.

“Ms. Rhone stated that Lilliana collected cash payments of rent from several tenants,” Ruszczyk wrote, “however, there was no history of paperwork i.e., receipts or electronic notes that the rent was collected and deposited into the company’s account. Ms. Rhone stated that Lilliana was keeping the money for herself.”

In the police report, Rhone listed three Seabury tenants who gave Yaccarino cash payments that the then property manager allegedly embezzled.

According to the police report, Jordan Humphrey gave $1,500 in cash which was not accounted for in the audit, and he had a total outstanding balance of $5,094. Dieshall Gilbert cave Yaccarino $5,597 in cash, which was not accounted for in the audit. And Monique Brown gave Yaccarino $4,736 in cash, which was not accounted for in the audit.

“Ms. Rhone stated that the company is still checking other transactions involving Lilliana and her collection of rent,” Ruszczyk wrote.

A fourth tenant, Williams (see more below), filed a separate police report in July 2019 alleging that she had given Yaccarino a $1,500 cash security deposit and an additional $734 in cash for the first month’s rent when she moved into Seabury in April 2018.

New Haven Police Department Officer Kyle Listro, who took Williams’s testimony and filed the subsequent police report, wrote that Williams was able to provide him with a receipt for this transaction, dated April 2, 2018.

Seabury Cooperative Co-Chair Demetria Lindsey told the Independent that the cooperative has handed over any further complaints and evidence of alleged theft to the police, as well as to their insurance company, over the past year-plus. Faith Asset Management CEO Kimalee Williams said the same (see below for a full statement from Faith Asset Management.)

Lindsey told the Independent that at least five or six tenants in total have reported having cash payments allegedly stolen by Yaccarino before the latter quit in June 2018. She said that tenants have complained to her about alleged theft by property managers who worked for Seabury even before Yaccarino.

No charges have yet been filed against Yaccarino.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Yaccarino told the Independent Monday morning when reached by phone and asked for a comment about the theft allegations.

She said she left her job with Faith Asset Management in June 2018 not because she had been stealing money from tenants, but because she had been diagnosed with cancer and needed to attend to her health. “I’m still getting treatment,” she said.

She said the tenants who have accused her of theft were and are simply trying to avoid eviction lawsuits for alleged nonpayment of rent.

“She knows what she did,” Lindsey told the Independent Monday morning about Yaccarino. “Right now, we’re still trying to put together stuff. We have to go back three, four years and see how long it’s been going on.” All tenants had an opportunity to speak to the police when the cooperative first filed the police report last July, she said. And as tenants continue to come forward with accusations and documentation of money they gave Yaccarino, she said, she passes that information along to the police and to the cooperative’s insurance company.

Tenants who have proof of payments given to Yaccarino have not had and will not have those discrepancies on the cooperative’s ledgers held against them, she said. “But a lot of people were giving cash money to this lady,” she said. “You’re not supposed to give cash money. We can’t prove on cash money.”

Lindsey said that those who are behind in their rent, or, as the cooperative calls it, “monthly carrying charges,” and who cannot prove that those discrepancies are directly related to alleged theft by Yaccarino, have faced and will continue to face eviction lawsuits for alleged nonpayment of rent. “Until you give the management company some proof, then we can follow up,” she said. “Take care of the matter, and things won’t get penalized against you. If we can’t prove it, and we can’t submit to” the police or the insurance company, “then the next step is legal fees and court and then eviction.”

Earlier this year, Seabury secured a $500,000 pre-development loan from the Connecticut Green Bank to help organize a plan to get more financing going forward, to pay for design and architectural fees to lower electric costs, and to replace the buildings’ roofs and windows. Seabury had faced $300,000 in unpaid United Illuminating bills, as well as arrears in property taxes, before securing that loan.

2 Years, 15 Eviction Lawsuits

Demara Williams, 26, has been living in a sixth floor apartment at Seabury Cooperative Housing since May 2018.

On Nov. 9, 2018, Seabury, as represented by Glastonbury-based attorney Michael Clinton, filed a summary process complaint alleging that Williams had failed to pay her August rent of $809.

The notice to quit from Aug. 21 of that year said that Williams owed “monthly carrying charges” in the amount of $1,176.

The eviction lawsuit was the eighth alleged nonpayment of rent case filed by Clinton on behalf of Seabury since Dec. 2017, according to online court records. Clinton and Seabury would file another seven eviction suits, all but one of which were for alleged nonpayment of rent, between the start of Williams’s case and June 2019.

Eleven of those 15 evictions lawsuits so far have resulted in the successful removal of tenants. One suit was withdrawn, and three, including Williams’s, have led to stipulated agreements between the cooperative and the tenant in question.

Lindsey told the Independent that, during her five years at Seabury, the cooperative has tended to average around two or three evictions per year. Fifteen in less than two years, she admitted, was a lot.

Williams, a New Haven native who works at a Panera cafe in Hamden, studies early childhood psychology at Gateway Community College, and is the mother of a 4-year-old son who just started at Amistad Academy Elementary School on Edgewood Avenue, told the Independent that she is, was, and always has been current on her rent.

The apparent delinquency in the cooperative’s ledger for her account, Williams said, stemmed from Yaccarino’s alleged theft, not from Williams’s alleged nonpayment.

“Seabury is trying any and every way to get money to pay off debts that they owe because of the previous property manager embeseling [sp.] money from the building and its tenits [sp.],” Williams wrote in a Nov. 27, 2018 court-filed answer to the initial eviction lawsuit.

“My trust is completely gone,” Williams said in a subsequent interview with the Independent in this September. “I just want things to be normal.”

Williams said she has proof of every money order rent payment she’s made to Seabury during her year-plus living at the cooperative.

She wound up signing a stipulation with Seabury in February in which she agreed to pay $1,615.95 in arrears, costs and attorney’s fees accrued throughout the first three months of the eviction case, in addition to her regular monthly rent, which by then Seabury said had risen $895.

Williams told the Independent that she regrets agreeing to pay the court fees. When asked why she signed the stipulation if she knew she was up to date on her rent and was confident that Yaccarino had stolen her first month’s rent and security deposit, Williams said, “I was naive.”

According to court records, Williams has subsequently fallen behind on paying the $100-plus in arrears she owes each month, and Seabury is pushing ahead with the eviction.

“It’s very hard for me” to pay both rent and arrears, Williams said, because her child’s father no longer contributes to rent, and she gets paid on a biweekly basis that is completely contingent upon the hours her manager gives her at Panera.

“I moved into the building to save money so I could buy a house,” she said. That prospect is looking more and more remote, she said, as she struggles through this eviction lawsuit.

“I’m just trying to make a living, pay my bills, live right,” she said.

Williams isn’t the only tenant to complain to face an eviction suit after suffering from the alleged theft of Yaccarino.

Dieshell Gilbert, a former Seabury tenant who was hit with an eviction lawsuit for alleged nonpayment of rent in Dec. 2017, also wrote that she was a victim of Yaccarino’s theft in her court-filed answer to a summary process complaint.

“I was told by the previous property manager Liliana Yaccarin [sp.] that she would help me with my rent,” Gilbert wrote, “and I didn’t have to worry about being evicted. I found out later in my stay at Seabury she has been stealing all rent that I paid.”

Gilbert was ultimately evicted from her apartment in November 2018.

None of the other 13 recent eviction lawsuit court records reference Yaccarino directly or indirectly. However, several other tenants have alleged various other misunderstandings that might have led to the eviction suit in the first place.

“I left in July 2018 and a family member helped me grab the remaining of my belongings in October 2018,” Monique Browne wrote in a response to a Nov. 9, 2018 summary process complaint. That lawsuit was ultimately withdrawn.

“When I originally moved into Seabury my lease that I signed was $860,” wrote Stacey Dixon in her response to a Jan. 8, 2019 summary process complaint. “I told them I lost my job and on the lease it clearly states that they go by my income.” Dixon and Seabury signed a stipulated agreement in April.

“I do not know why the eviction was brought,” wrote Terrence Riggins in response to a June 19, 2019 summary process complaint. “I expressed intentions to pay balance. Rent is not $907. It began at $679, then was increased to $754.” Riggens and Seabury signed a stipulated agreement in July.

Seabury Co-Chair Lindsey told the Independent that there is no direct relationship between Yaccarino’s alleged thefts and the recent raft of eviction lawsuits. Those are related solely to nonpayment of rent, she said, including for those tenants who have not been able to provide proof that their account balance is allegedly because of Yaccarino.

“If you’re not paying your carrying charges every month,” she said, “it leads for you to go to court.”

The following statement responds to your inquiries regarding Seabury Cooperative theft claim and evictions:

Kimalee Williams, the CEO of Faith Asset Management, provided the following statement to the Independent in response to a request for comment on Yaccarino’s alleged theft, on the recent spike in evictions, and on Williams’s case in particular:

There is an ongoing insurance claim and criminal investigation by New Haven police surrounding the alleged theft and fraudulent activity by the former Property Manager. The former manager was terminated for job abandonment after not returning to work immediately following her being presented with documentation reflecting discrepancies and a request for her to respond to her involvement in the alleged fraud.

There were several affected residents who were asked to provide proof of payment, obtain a police report and provide a written statement which was submitted to the Property’s insurance company for fund recovery.

No resident who complied with requests to provide statements and obtain police reports to support the claim and investigation was penalized for any violations related to the alleged fraudulent activity. This process took between 3 to 6 months to accomplish in order to ensure ample time was given to protect any resident who had a discrepancy on their account that could in any way be related to the alleged fraudulent activity.

The resident in question did comply with providing the requested documentation. Seabury Cooperative is pursuing enforcement action against this resident based on noncompliance with a court-stipulated agreement for nonpayment of monthly fees unrelated to the scope of the alleged fraud. There are also other housing code violations cited against this resident.

Seabury Cooperative works relentlessly to avoid displacement of any resident. Steps are taken to enter into internal payment arrangements, referrals are made to eviction prevention agencies, and court stipulated agreements are accepted.

Physical evictions are always a last and reluctant recourse, but at times are essential for Seabury to comply with its fiduciary duties. This course of action is implemented in order for Seabury to maintain affordable, safe and decent housing for ALL of its residents.