POINT PLEASANT BEACH, N.J. -
D'Alessandro, 52, who was staying in an oceanfront home while visiting his ailing mother, was in the habit of taking nighttime kayak trips in the ocean, according to police. His orange kayak was found overturned miles away last Monday morning, five days after his mother notified police he was late for a lunch date.
Despite an intensive air and sea search conducted by the Coast Guard, D'Alessandro's body was not found until a passing boat crew spotted it floating in the sea.
The Florida developer was a partner in D'Alessandro and Woodyard Commercial Realtors, which helped originate a plan to sell pre-leased homes to thousands of investors that were financed in partnership with Norlarco CU, Huron River Area CU and New Horizons Community FCU, which have all been taken over by NCUA after the failed real estate speculation project fell apart.
D'Alessandro's firm offered closing, financing, property management and procurement of tenants for the pre-leased properties. He and his firm are named as defendants in dozens of suits brought in state and federal court claiming the scheme violated federal securities laws.
The conservatorship of the three credit unions-New Horizons has been sold off piecemeal by NCUA-has left the federal regulator with as much as $500-million in residential construction loans in Cape Coral and Lehigh Acres, with dozens more credit unions who bought participations in the loan pools also exposed.
Meantime, a federal judge last week scheduled a hearing next month on whether to consolidate about a dozen purported class action suits filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Dozens more suits have been filed in Lee County state court in Ft. Myers.
The hearing is scheduled for Oct. 15, after a 45-day stay requested by NCUA has expired. NCUA, which represents the three failed credit unions in the case, requested the stay in order to commence negotiations with the home builder in the two developments, K. Hovnanian Enterprises on a possible resolution of the properties held by Norlarco CU and Huron River Area CU. "We're working to maintain the value of as much of the members' assets as possible," said John McKechnie, chief spokesman for the agency.
But NCUA may be working against the clock and the deteriorating real estate market in southwest Florida, as Hovnanian, desperate to unload as much of the property as possible after five straight quarterly losses, has begun a fire sale of the homes. Hundreds of the homes were sold in a recent "red tag" sale at two-thirds of the original value, diminishing the value of the properties held by the two credit unions.
The suits claim the developers and home builders engage din fraud and violations of federal securities laws in the operation of a program they called "Millionaire University" which purported to teach individual investors how to become rich off of real estate. The program offered the investors the opportunity to buy $214,000 "pre-leased" homes in the two developments for just $1,000 down payment and guaranteed them a 14% return after one year. The process was supposed to culminate when the investors were able to sell, or flip, the properties at a substantial profit after one year.
The loans were made by the three CUs-two in Colorado and one in Michigan-and several regional banks. But in the midst of the local real estate bust many of the homes went unleased, depriving the investors of their returns, and causing them to default on their loans. Foreclosures in the two developments, as well as the region, have skyrocketed in recent months, leaving the lenders holding the loans.
