Management 
“Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.”
—Charles Caleb Colton

With Vince Cianfarani gone, YCC #42 went through a few managers until Larry Lee, the leader of a small clique of owners, became president of the condo corporation in December 1999.

Larry Lee
Larry appointed himself interim property manager and began drawing a salary from the corporation. Larry was quite the manager.

Larry owned Lincolndale Construction that did work in private units. Larry had the corporation’s four handymen work for his private company, renovating owner’s units while they were being paid by the corporation.

He also ordered supplies used by Lincolndale Construction and gave the bills to YCC #42 for payment. It was later discovered that, among other items, he billed the condo for 100 toilets that were not installed in any of the corporation’s units.

Larry also sold some of the condo’s assets and pocketed the proceeds.

Boiler installation
In 2000, despite the opposition of one director, Larry had the board sign a contract with a contractor to replace the boilers in 340 Dixon Road at a cost of $368,409.00. There were no competitive bids and no engineering assessment done for this work.

Unfortunately for Larry, one of the corporation’s employees was in Larry’s unit doing some minor repairs when he happened to see the invoice for the installation of the boilers from the contractor to Lincolndale Construction for approximately $58,000.

The employee told the other board members what he saw.

In the summer of 2001, the board deposed Larry as president and terminated his management contract, although he remained a director.

Criminal charges
The board informed the corporation’s lawyer who advised them to hire an auditor from Deloitte and Touche who uncovered numerous acts of fraud. The police laid 14 criminal charges against Larry and the board commenced legal action to try to recover the condo’s losses.

Larry sold his unit and eventually, in order to save money, the board dropped their civil suit.

Property management company
The board then replaced Larry Lee with a property management company.

The corporation started having problems with this management company. Around October 2001, the manager advised the board to hire Vic’s Plumbing to do seasonal maintenance on the boilers. There was no breakdown of the work that was to be done but the quoted price was approximately $30,000.

One of the directors was opposed to granting this contract, as previous companies charged about a third of that. He contacted another plumbing company who quoted a price of $5,700.

The board gave the contract to a third company.

Something seemed funny when the condo’s office kept receiving faxes for Vic’s Plumbing so the inquisitive director conducted a corporate search on Vic’s Plumbing and discovered that their property manager was the owner and director of Vic’s Plumbing.

Oh my, how interesting.

This director, who seems to have more curiosity than a cat, then started reviewing the invoices that Vic’s Plumbing charged the condo. There was a lot of unnecessary plumbing work performed and one job—that was not approved by the board—totaled $60,000. However, it was submitted $5,000 at a time so it would not be noticed.

In August 2002, the property management company was fired.

Next
One of the directors urged the board to hire a small property management company for $130,000 a year. This company was fired after they demanded payment of $8,000 for overtime. The majority of the board thought that this seemed excessive.

There were also unproven allegations that the director who urged the board to hire this company was receiving $2,000 a month in kickbacks and had his apartment renovated for free.

Vero Property Management
Then the board hired Vero Property Management who remained with the condo until they resigned at the end of October 2012.


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