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Suspicious activity related to real estate fraud reports filed by financial institutions Data: FBI; National Association of Realtors
Nancy Quon in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas in August K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP Photo; Misty Keasler for Bloomberg Businessweek
On the morning of Nov. 16, a few weeks after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors, Amesbury was found on the streets of a Las Vegas suburb severely beaten with multiple injuries, including two broken kneecaps. According to a story by Jeff German in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, police have so far found no evidence linking the beating to the FBI investigation.
On a recent Thursday evening at the clubhouse, the Vistana board members met with their lawyer, Richard Haskin, to discuss the the community’s civil suit alleging that the straw buyers, in cahoots with Benzer, vastly overpaid for Silver Lining’s services. Haskin is working on an amended civil RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) complaint that will add Quon as a defendant and seek upwards of $8 million in damages. “I was privy to the repairs,” says Vistana resident Tony Kneip, himself a retired general contractor. “They were outrageously high.”
Lawyers for Silver Lining Construction continue to allege the homeowner association owes Benzer’s company $750,000. “It’s a classic breach-of-contract, failure-to-pay case,” says Benzer’s attorney, Sigal Chattah.
Whether the Vistana can retrieve any money remains to be seen. The criminal fire investigation revealed that although her law firm has shut down, Quon still possesses significant assets. (No one else at Quon Bruce Christensen has been indicted.) During a court hearing in August, prosecutors told the judge that in 2009, Quon made transfers of $2.7 million and $2.9 million into an offshore bank account. Last year she bought her daughter an apartment in New York City, paying $750,000 in cash.
“The bottom line for the homeowners is we’d like to see a lot of pain and suffering on their end,” says board member Larry Fitch.
In the meantime, thousands of people who bought condos during the boom are still coping with their own financial hardship. Two-bedroom, two-bath condos at the Vistana were going for $200,000 in 2007. In November a 929-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath unit sold for $59,000.
Murray and her husband moved out of the Vistana in 2008 and now live in a nearby development. “I couldn’t take the pressure anymore,” says Murray. “Everything we did, they came after us. I’d had enough.”
Eventually, she and her husband let their dream home slip into foreclosure. “The reputation was out there, and nobody wanted to live there,” says Murray. “So we let it go. … I took a big hit.”
These days, Murray stays as far away from homeowner associations as possible. She is, however, looking forward to seeing where the FBI’s investigation ultimately leads. Many mysteries remain.
To this day, Murray has never laid eyes on Leon Benzer. No matter how many times they typed his name into Google or drew up elaborate maps linking him to members of their homeowner association, the residents of Vistana never seemed to get a glance of Benzer in person. He always kept his distance. (Through his lawyer, Benzer declined an interview request.)
Benzer’s primary business, Silver Lining Construction, has likewise kept a low profile. In 1998 a rare article about the company in the Review-Journal reported that Silver Lining Construction had been hired to renovate the Pioneer Club, a historic building in downtown Las Vegas that had served as everything from a restaurant to a casino to a brothel. Benzer’s job was to turn the space into a gift shop. “A lot of contractors are afraid of this kind of work because of the hidden nightmares you can run into,” he told the paper. “We like the challenges. We spent six months in preplanning, and our philosophy has always been Murphy’s Law—anything that possibly could go wrong will.”
