A&R Property Management, Margaret Dade, Owner
Embezzled and defrauded us of over $6000 while engaged as our property manager

This report outlines events related to the actions of Margaret Dade, the owner of A&R Property Management. We believe that these actions include, but are not limited to breach of fiduciary responsibility, misuse of a real estate trust fund, professional misconduct, fraud and embezzlement.

We contracted with A&R Property Management in March, 1999 to manage the rental of our former residence in Danville, CA. Since this time the ownership of this firm has changed three times with Margaret being the third owner. The first two owners provided excellent service.
At first Margaret's performance was satisfactory but over time she became increasingly lax in her responsibilities such as timely bill paying and monthly statement generation.

The Contra Costa County property tax bill for 2005 was sent by the county to our home in Washington State. I did not forward this bill on to A&R for payment in a timely manner.in January I discovered this oversight and sent the bill (first half due in October and second half due in April) to A&R for payment, acknowledging that we would have to pay the penalty for late payment on the first half.

We were notified in May by Contra Costa County that the taxes had not been paid. When I followed up with A&R I was told that they had been paid. I was then told by A&R in an email that payment had been made and that copies of the canceled checks would be taken to the county and the situation straightened out. It is important to note that Contra Costa County has no record of any attempted payment activity during this period.
Throughout this period there were several verbal conversations where Margaret gave us what we now know to be fictional reasons that the taxes remained unpaid.in July the reason she gave us was that the county had credited the payment to the wrong property.in fact, on July 1 check #2362 for $5,794.34 payable to the Contra Costa County tax collector was written on the A&R Property Management Trust Account at Wells Fargo Bank.
This was the first time that any action had actually occurred to attempt to pay the taxes.

We called the county tax collectors office twice in July and confirmed both times that payment had been made and that our property was current on taxes.in fact, the taxes had not been paid. The above check bounced and was sent through again by the county and bounced a second time. This process took several weeks and the above referenced calls by us to the county were made during this interval.

In August we received a property statement (these are supposed to be generated monthly but by this time A&R had become increasingly erratic and sporadic in their reporting) which stated that the 2005 taxes had been paid prior to June 21 (the date of the last prior report). The balance of our funds held in trust on that report was shown as $2,608.38 through July 25.
On August 9 A&R initiated a long term installment payment scheme with the county and made the first payment of $172.73 with a personal check drawn on an account at Citibank.

On August 12 we terminated A&R as our property manager and demanded payment of all monies due and all files and records forwarded to our new property manager.in September we received a final check from A&R for $5,403.33 that accounted for our account balance, the August rent payment of $3,000.00 and the deduction of an unexplained cost of $205.00.

It is important to understand that during this period we had no knowledge that the property taxes were actually unpaid. The facts outlined above were discovered much later in early 2006. The last status we had were the assurances by Contra Costa County in July that the taxes were paid.

The first notice we had that the taxes were still unpaid was in March when our new property manager received a Redemption of Tax Defaulted Property notice. At this point we made a trip to Martinez, CA to review this matter with the county tax assessor's staff. It was at this meeting that many of the details regarding this matter came to light.

On April 3 we sent a letter by certified mail receipt requested to the last business address of A&R and to the residence of Margaret Dade [See exhibit H]. The letter sent to the business address was returned notated: Not deliverable as addressed Unable to forward. The letter sent to the home address was returned notated: Unclaimed. On May 22 we sent the same letter and a cover letter to the same locations for standard delivery. Neither letter was returned as undeliverable and must therefore be assumed to be received by A&R. There has been no response from A&R Property Management.

Company: A&R Property Management, Margaret Dade, Owner
Country: USA
State: California
City: Danville
Address: 240 Abigail Circle
Phone: 9256483411

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