Racketeering Scheme for Homes Claimed

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (CN) - The owners of a park for manufactured homes and several judges, attorneys and local officials are accused of running a scheme to steal homes from residents.

In a lawsuit filed last week in superior court, residents of the Mountain Shadows Mobile Home Community say they are being held in a prison-like atmosphere while the owners, managers and several accomplices scheme to seize their homes.

Their complaint "is a pitiful story of financial and emotional abuse of elderly and disabled citizens - too weak or poor to fight the ruthless racketeers who systematically steal their homes and their personal property to enhance an evil racketeering enterprise," Santa Barbara attorney Nancy McCarron said.

McCarron also is an owner of a home in the park and one of the plaintiffs.

McCarron says the primary defendants are Arnold H. Stubblefield and Thomas L. Parrish. Stubblefield is a "greedy developer" and Parrish a "streetwise real estate broker who filches homes with impunity," McCarron says.

Stubblefield is a co-owner of Mountain Shadows Mobile Home Community and Stubblefield Construction. Parrish is a senior executive vice president of the construction company, McCarron says.

The mobile home community's website indicates it is a mobile home park for adults over age 55, and is located in the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains.

McCarron claims both Stubblefield and Parrish bribe tax assessors to minimize tax liabilities, and bribe judges through campaign donations to win favorable court judgments.

A1978 California mobile home residency law allows mobile home park owners to evict residents only for good cause, but McCarron says Stubblefield and Parrish "circumvented" the law to "filch homes," "trick elderly owners to re-convey title" and refuse to approve potential buyers or allow subleasing to "force owners to abandon homes."

McCarron says Parrish is the only person at the mobile home community who approves or denies all applications for residency or sub leasing and routinely denies applications without actual cause as "an overt act as part of a racketeering enterprise to filch mobile homes."

Another plaintiff, Bonnie J. Shipley, says park manager Marvin Freeman "as part of a fraudulent scheme to steal" the mobile home she was subleasing from McCarron in August 2012 tried to illegally evict her.

Shipley says Freeman told her she had to move out the next day because she was 51 and not the park's minimum age of 55.

She also says Stubblefield told her, "If you want to stay in the park, you have to find a sugar daddy over 55 to move in with."

Shipley fought the eviction in court and eventually prevailed after appealing a lower court decision against her, but says she is facing another "sham eviction" attempt.

In the 77-page complaint, McCarron says several of the "sham" evictions were upheld by judges running "kangaroo courts" after accepting what McCarron describes as bribes from Stubblefield and others.

Because of the evictions and the control Parrish maintains over who can sublease the mobile homes after they become vacant, McCarron says the homes' values have dropped from an average of about $100,000 to nothing.

Park officials try to "drive away" real estate brokers who enter the park to sell or lease individual homes and the "enterprise" eventually acquires them "for free," McCarron says.

Among the two dozen defendants named in the complaint are San Bernardino County judges Michael A. Sachs, Kyle Brodie and Christopher B. Marshall.

Also included among individual defendants are San Bernardino County clerk Bob Dutton, fire chief Michael A. Sachs, arson investigators Steve Tracy and Marcio Carvalho. Attorneys Darrell P. White, Ryan J. Egan and Robert G. Williamson, and park manager Joyce Mauser also are listed among defendants.

The companies named as defendants are Stubblefield Construction, Stubblefield Properties, Mountain Shadows Mobile Home Community, Securitas Security Services USA, and the Hart-King law firm.

All defendants are accused of fraud, conversion and elder abuse.

Plaintiffs McCarron, Shipley, Joyce Dalen, Steve and Pat Shaw, Anthony Grasso and Stephen Allen seek declaratory and injunctive relief.

Officials at Mountain Shadows Mobile Home Community did not return calls seeking comment.

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