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Las Vegas HOA takeover ringleader has sentence commuted by President Biden

Joe Biden President
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LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A former Las Vegas construction boss, who was convicted as part of a multimillion dollar scheme to fraudulently gain control of condominium homeowners’ associations, has had his federal prison sentence commuted by President Joe Biden.

On Thursday, the White House announced that Biden has pardoned 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes and commuted the sentences of 1,499 people.

Those commutations are for people who have served out home confinement sentences for at least one year after they were released. Those prisoners were originally placed in home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the CARES Act.

"America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances. As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses," Biden said in a statement. "These commutation recipients, who were placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic, have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second change."

Biden commutes 1,500 sentences in largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history

While no Nevadans received a pardon, one of the 1,499 that had their sentence commuted was Leon Benzer.

From August 2003 through February 2009, Benzer and an attorney developed a scheme to control the boards of directors of HOAs across the Las Vegas valley. Plea documents state Benzer and his co-conspirators recruited straw buyers to purchase condominiums and secure positions on HOAs' boards of directors.

On several occasions, co-conspirators attempted to create the appearance that the elections were legitimate, according to the Department of Justice. This was done at times by hiring attorneys to run the HOA board elections as “special election masters,” to preside over the HOA board elections and supervise the counting of ballots. The “special election masters” were complicit and part of the conspiracy. They allowed co-conspirators to access the ballots for the purpose of opening the ballots and influencing the results to ensure certain co-conspirator candidates won the election.

Investigators state the co-conspirators also created false phone surveys to gather information about voting intentions, used mailing lists to vote on behalf of out-of-town homeowners unlikely to participate in the elections, and submitted fake or forged ballots for non-voting homeowners.

Benzer also admitted, as part of his guilty plea agreement, that he paid the board members to take actions favorable to his interests, including hiring his co-conspirator's law firm to handle construction-related litigation and awarding remedial construction contracts to Benzer's company, Silver Lining Construction.

In September 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed one of nine search warrants and found that Benzer was in the process of targeting well over 20 different HOAs for illegal takeovers.

CHANNEL 13 ARCHIVES: FBI executes search warrant at one of Leon Benzer's businesses

FBI executes search warrant at one of Leon Benzer's businesses

"There were boxes and boxes of folders with information about different HOAs," Special Agent Michael Elliott said in 2015. He spent nearly eight years working on the investigation with the FBI's Las Vegas Division. "This was a very sophisticated scam that evolved over time and generated millions of dollars for Benzer."

In January 2015, Benzer pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, 14 counts of wire fraud, two counts of mail fraud, and two counts of tax evasion. He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $13,294,100.

In August 2015, Benzer was sentenced to 188 months, or about 15 and a half years, in federal prison.

According to federal records, Benzer is assigned to a federal residential re-entry management office in Phoenix, Arizona with a release date of July 26, 2025.

Ultimately, at least 42 people faced charges related to the $58,141,275 million scheme and at the time, it was considered the largest political corruption case in Southern Nevada.

FBI - Leon Benzer operation
During one phase of the lengthy investigation into Leon Benzer and his associates, an undercover operative received a $20,000 bribe in a Las Vegas parking lot from one of the subjects in the case—while the FBI secretly recorded the transaction.

There were several suspicious deaths regarding people involved in the case.

Former Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department lieutenant Chris Van Cleff died by suicide in 2008 following an FBI raid as part of the investigation and Robbie Castro, a homeowners association board member, died from a drug overdose in 2010.

Nancy Quon, a construction defect lawyer, was found dead in a bathtub at a Henderson condominium in March 2012.

"Suicide will be one of the considerations along with accidental and medical, but at this time there is no evidence of foul play," Keith Paul, a spokesman for the Henderson Police Department, told ABC News at the time.

Five days after her death, Las Vegas attorney David Amesbury was found dead of an apparent hanging in Grass Valley, Calif.

"There is no evidence of foul play or suspicion right now but it is still being investigated," Nevada County Chief Deputy Coroner Paul Schmidt told ABC News at the time.

"I know of no specific reason why he would have done this," responded Frank Cremen, Amesbury's defense lawyer. "I know his family doesn't believe it was suicide."

According to the Justice Department, Amesbury had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in October 2011.

Authorities have previously told Channel 13 that none of those deaths appear to be related.