Timeline of John Hoff Oklahoma Law License Application and Results

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Question for the Hawthorne Hawkman

Note: The end of this post has been updated. An anonymous commenter on the JNS blog asked Jeff if he had seen this post. Jeff responded on that site rather than here so, I have copied his reply and pasted it here. To avoid any complaints, I am disclosing that he did not post his reply on this site. -Anti Johnny



On the JNS blog, Jeff Skrenes a.k.a. the Hawthorne Hawkman made it a point to highlight the applause that was given in response to the principal owners of TJ Waconia being in prison (even though the story is well past yesterday's news).

So the Mis-Adventures of Johnny Northside is reaching out to Jeff personally to answer the following (or at least offer an opinion).

The city council did such an amazing job of taking a stand against fraud as it has been reported in the case of TJ Waconia. The city filed a civil suit that was announced by Mayor Rybak and a few No-Mi neighborhoods joined that lawsuit as well (Hawthorne was not among them).
1) Can you comment on why the Hawthorne neighborhood did not join in that suit?
2) Can you offer an opinion on how the buyout the city agreed to with SunTrust Mortgage has had an impact on No-Mi?
Note: As part of the settlement between the city and SunTrust, the city bought a slew of properties from SunTrust's REO department that were previously owned by TJ Waconia for a mere 10 to 12% discount. The suit was dismissed soon after. TJ Waconia was not the focus of the suit soon after it was filed because, SunTrust Mortgage was not notified of the law suit prior to it being filed and announced. The significance of that was that SunTrust was actually the legal owners of most of the properties included in the suit as TJ Waconia had already lost them to foreclosure. SunTrust countered the law suit and the city ended up buying many of the houses from SunTrust because of it. It is undetermined how much money the city wasted by pursuing the civil suit and having to buy houses when a simple title search would have disclosed that SunTrust owned the houses and did not need to be put under city control as was reported.
Here is the link to the dismissed case. http://pa.courts.state.mn.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=1611672898 And here is the link to the related case that was also dismissed: http://pa.courts.state.mn.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=1611685450

It would be interesting to hear the housing director's take on this as he can see first hand at what impact the neighborhoods have had as a result of the city controlling so many houses (as a result of having to over pay for them, costing the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more).
I hope Jeff will respond as this blog does not pick and choose which comments to allow. His comments are not only allowed but, welcomed.
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The Hawthorne Hawkman said... @ anon 1:34 - I read that post now, thanks. I will not respond on that particular site because it is entirely dedicated to smearing the name of a good friend and neighborhood advocate. The article posed two questions to me: why wasn't Hawthorne involved in the TJ Waconia suit, and then a second, very technical question.
Hawthorne was not involved in the TJ Waconia lawsuit because there were only a small handful of TJ Waconia properties in the Hawthorne neighborhood. That doesn't mean we weren't affected at all by Helgason's and Balko's fraud; only that the staff and volunteer resources that would have been used up if we'd been a plaintiff would not have brought the neighborhood a large enough return on that investment of time and energy. Plus, as demonstrated by the convictions, the city and the neighborhoods primarily affected clearly didn't need our help on this one.

As for the second question, since I was not involved directly, I will not venture into that territory. Mr. Watkins can ask any of the plaintiffs about that directly if he so chooses, or someone can post an answer here or on another blog.
January 25, 2010 8:57 AM
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(Anti-Johnny's follow up)
Jeff: First, let me thank you for answering (even though it was not directly on here.
Second, I would be thrilled to ask the 2nd question I posted directly to some of the Plaintiffs as you suggested (I have asked a handful already but, there has been no reply). Which site or forum would be the most appropriate place to ask the question? On a side note, I am wanting to know the answer to that question as it does go way beyond TJ Waconia and the mis-handling of that case. The fact that you did give a response to the question leads me to believe that you agree (at least somewhat) that the events that took place in that case, could very well have a significant effect with the neighborhoods and residents of No-Mi.

--Anti Johnny

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

anti-johnny - you are always trying to make something out of nothing. Just because you can't get any traction and you can't get any response from some of the most important people in minneapolis does not mean there is a something afoot.

A few months ago you yourself posted and made all these illusions about some scandal involving the settlement of some lawsuit with suntrust mortgage or whatever. You promised more info and you never delivered. One can only assume because there is NO MORE INFO. There is no smoking gun.

Here's your words:
"Now... HOW MUCH did the city pay SunTrust Mortgage to settle???
Stay tuned because, it is A LOT! "

So what's the deal anti-johnny? Why are you trying to make something out of nothing.

Sean Ryan said...

What is this post all about. Did they not commit fraud?

Anonymous said...

Here's a facebook page dedicated to telling him to F-off:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=2223921805

Wolves Fan in Dallas said...

To Anon 3:07
Thanks for the reminder. Here is the proof of the settlement:
October 10, 2008 – 10:35 a.m.

The Council met pursuant to adjournment.

Council President Johnson in the Chair.

Present – Council Members Glidden, Remington, Goodman, Samuels, Gordon, Hofstede, Ostrow, Lilligren, President Johnson.

Absent – Council Members Benson, Hodges, Schiff, Colvin Roy.

Ginder stated that the meeting may be closed for the purpose of discussing attorney-client privileged matters involving the case of City of Minneapolis, et al. v. T.J. Waconia, et al.

At 10:36 a.m., Lilligren moved that the meeting be closed. Seconded.

Adopted upon a voice vote.

Absent – Council Members Benson, Hodges, Schiff, Colvin Roy.

Present – Council Members Glidden (out 11:17-11:32 a.m.), Remington (out at 11:18 a.m.), Goodman (out at 11:33 a.m.), Hodges (in at 10:37 a.m.), Samuels, Gordon, Hofstede, Ostrow, Schiff (in at 10:38 a.m.), Lilligren (out 11:03-11:15 a.m.), Colvin Roy (in at 10:38 a.m.), President Johnson.

Absent – Council Member Benson.

Also Present – Susan Segal, City Attorney; Peter Ginder, Deputy City Attorney; Mary Cullen Yeager and Erika Toftness, outside counsel with Faegre & Benson LLP; Mayor R.T. Rybak; Cara Letofsky, Mayor's Office; Elfric Porte, Department of Community Planning & Economic Development; Henry Reimer, Department of Regulatory Services; Steven Ristuben, City Clerk; and Irene Kasper, City Clerk's Office.

Ginder and Teager summarized the case of City of Minneapolis, et al. v. T.J. Waconia, et al.from 10:37 a.m. to 11:34 a.m.

At 11:35 a.m., Lilligren moved that the meeting be opened. Seconded.

Adopted upon a voice vote.

Absent – Remington, Benson, Glidden.

A motion to approve partial settlement of the case of City of Minneapolis, et al. v. T.J. Waconia, et al., Hennepin County Court File No. 27-CV-08-7880 by approving settlement of claims against SunTrust Mortgage, Inc. (“SunTrust”), was adopted by the City Council and approved by Mayor Rybak on 10/10/2008 (published 10/15/2008).

And here is the link to the entire council meeting:
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:kAExpNIJxFoJ:www.finance-commerce.com/publicnotices.cfm%3Fmode%3Dmpls%26display%3Dhtml%26id%3D280+%22mary+cullen+yeager%22+suntrust&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

I don't just make this shit up.

Wolves Fan in Dallas said...

Just a follow up: See the newest post after this one for the break down of the settlement between the City of Minneapolis and SunTrust Mortgage.
To Anon 3:07: Is this just make believe? If you claim there is no smoking gun now... Perhaps you have been smoking a bit much of whatever JNS has been.

Anonymous said...

What do you don't get get is IT's NO BIG DEAL. There is no big smoking gun pointing at Rybak, Hofstede, Johnson, Samuels, City of Mpls, John Hoff, Hawkman, Connie Nompelis... NO SMOKING GUN.

NO BIG DEAL.

Guess what -the smoking gun is pointing at fraudsters TJ Waconie - Balko and Hegelson. They are in prison where they belong.

Brandt ain't gonna do a story cause there IS NO STORY.

And you are the idiot that keeps trying to trump up some traction but you can't get any!!! Ha!

Put your energy and effort into something positive. Get a life, dude.

Wolves Fan in Dallas said...

The following comment was written by John Hoff. Even though proof was posted, he still sticks by his claims. Paid taxes or child support lately, John? Maybe Don Samuels will step up and pay your taxes.

Anonymous said...

If you mean the ABOVE comment was written by John Hoff - no. It wasn't. It was written by me, not John Hoff. If you follow his twitter line you can tell he is driving a truck somewhere - looks like Wisconsin right now. (I'm writing this at 1053pm)

So, no. I wrote it and I stick to my words that I have said in the other comments - you can gain any traction on your claims that there is some big scandal, not with the city, not with JNS or any of his associates, not with any of the councimembers or mayor that you try to bash.

The only scandal is that your friends screwed over a bunch of people and broke laws. They are now in prison. That's the only scandal.

I bet you don't even have 3 people reading your blog. And sadly, I am one of them.