on the cheap and restore it from the “slumlord”-like conditions she, her boyfriend, and her two young children had been living in.
The company also disclosed that it may use new investors’ money to pay dividends to existing ones. Experts say it can be risky for an investment fund to operate this way, since it may require ever more participants to be brought on board, rather than making money from its business. The firm did say it works to “comply with all securities, licensing, landlord-tenant, and other applicable laws and regulations.”
Since finishing his most recent prison stint for fraud and other offenses in 2018, Minkow has established a side business of researching companies he suspects of malfeasance and reporting them to the SEC as a whistle-blower. Whistle-blowers can sometimes claim a cut of what a company disgorges if they provide information used in a successful SEC investigation.
RAD “is an incredible company making a positive impact on our investors, team of employees, contractors, neighborhoods, non-profits and more,” Mendenhall said in an email. John Carney, who helps lead the securities, enforcement, and litigation team at BakerHostetler in New York, said any move by the SEC to share an outside report would not have been taken lightly by the agency. “The fact that the SEC is taking the time to share information with the Department of Justice is a serious step,” said Carney, who previously served as an attorney with both agencies.
In other videos for one of RAD’s side businesses, a network of leasable off-the-grid-encampments called the American Survivalist Project — “a plan B for when disaster strikes,” according to the venture’s website — Mendenhall’s banter can take a darker turn. “Our biggest city is Philadelphia, where we happen to have our longest-running, best team,” Mendenhall said on Woods’ podcast.
Landlords are required to renew a property’s rental license once a year. The $56-a-unit process requires landlords to be up-to-date on their property taxes and for the properties to be free of any safety or building-code violations. The Mendenhall-led funds also own Philadelphia properties with no license at all. City regulations require some kind of license for most property that is uninhabited or otherwise out of active use for three months or longer.
In late November, RAD threatened to evict her if she failed to pay $6,530 owed for unpaid rent since August. Another tenant of a Mendenhall-led fund, Terry Golden, 41, said he has been dealing for about a year with a flooded basement that his property managers have neglected to repair at his 880-square-foot home in West Philadelphia’s Haddington section.
RAD did not respond to requests for comment on these and other properties. The company “cares about its tenants” and believes in providing “above standard living conditions,” it said in its statement. Nicole Lawrence, executive director of the Tenant Union Representative Network, said such deterioration tends to spread blight throughout neighborhoods, diminishing safe, affordable housing opportunities in communities where they’re most needed.
His students there coaxed him into starting his first funds, he said in a video on the website for the seminar company, which remains in operation. “‘Put your money where your mouth is,’” he recalled them saying.RAD, which was established as a real estate investment trust, or REIT, in November 2019, is now in the process of using company stock to buy the real estate accumulated by those funds, according to the circular.
Isn't this the type of business that PSERS invests in?
-Add license fines to the tax bill - allow/ notify tenants to hold rent until license, taxes, violations are cleared
This article paints a picture of a greedy, shameless slumlord. It describes tenants paying rent to live in uninhabitable houses that lack rental licenses. It describes vacant properties, not licensed, that the slumlord is allowing to rot. Why does the city allow this to happen?