Legal action against Poconos realtor dismissed

Legal action was dismissed against Wilkins & Associated Real Estate Inc., three months after the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office admitted the firm should not have been named in a civil lawsuit against 20 Pocono companies and individuals accused of home sale fraud.

A Notice of Discontinuance of Action dated Oct. 18 was faxed three weeks later on Nov. 8 to Wilkins & Associates' legal council office. The action by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania states the action is discontinued against Wilkins and Associates Real Estate Inc only. NEPA Appraisal Services, which Wilkins &Associates sold in 1997, is still among those charged.

"It was literally a nightmare," declares Thomas R. Wilkins, president of Wilkins & Associates Real Estate Inc., the largest independently owned real estate firm in northeastern Pennsylvania, with six offices in Monroe and Pike counties. He didn't realize just how long it would take to clear his name or the problems it would cause personally and professionally.

Wilkins first heard that his company was one of the targets of a $2.7 million civil lawsuit by Attorney General Jerry Pappert on Aug. 25, when a local reporter called to get his reaction.

"We didn't understand or know what we were up against at that point," says Wilkins. "It threw us because we could only assume, based on the questions from the reporter from the Pocono Record, that it had to do with ownership of NEPA Appraisal Services." Wilkins' reaction was: "We don't own Northeast Pennsylvania Appraisal Services. "The reporter wasn't sure who to believe, Wilkins notes, since supposed documentation from the attorney general listed Wilkins & Associates Real Estate as the owner of the appraisal firm.

Wilkins immediately called Kathleen Spitzfaden and Kathleen Farrelly, who purchased NEPA Appraisal Service from Wilkins & Associates on May 15, 1997. As terms of the sale, Wilkins & Associates retained the fictitious name "NEPA Appraisal Service" for collateral purposes only until the note was satisfied 31 months later. The official name change was never completed with the Department of State, "an oversight," says Wilkins that his company has since corrected.

Spitzfaden revealed that representatives from the attorney general's office and investigators from the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs had been to see her.

Wilkins says that until the suit was served, "We never met anyone from the attorney general's office regarding claims of fraud, had no conversation over the telephone, no fax and no badge flashed in the numerous allegations against us." All the problems could have been avoided, he contends, with one phone call from the attorney general's office.

News of the suit was off the press and on the streets on the front page of The Pocono Record and other area newspapers by 6 a.m. the next day. "By 10," says Wilkins, "we were contacted by a number of our vendors that we interact with frequently on real estate dealings. They wanted to know, 'What is this all about?' We still had not received the lawsuit at this point," recalls Wilkins, who spent the day putting out fires and providing information to the company's insurance carrier, to banks and mortgage companies, including Fannie Mae, and to board members of NEPA Management Associates, a division of Wilkins & Associates Real Estate.

"We had to provide these people with proof that our firm should not be involved in this lawsuit and we did not own the company," he says.

When officials arrived at Wilkins & Associates' Stroudsburg corporate offices to serve the papers, Wilkins asked to be allowed to call the attorney general's office before he signed for them. After speaking to Senior Deputy Attorney General James Sysko and faxing him the paperwork proving the company had been sold, "He (Sysko) acknowledged they had errored," Wilkins said. "He literally said 'we're sorry.' I accepted his apology and I was under the impression that our being dropped from the suit would be done in a most expeditious fashion."

Sysko also indicated he would send out a press release admitting the error. "To the best of our knowledge, that was never done," adds Wilkins.

By Sept. 9, when they still hadn't heard anything from the attorney general's office, "We started our crusade to intervene," Wilkins says. He instructed his attorneys to press for resolving the matter, and in October Wilkins went to State Rep. Kelly Lewis for help. Noting that Lewis' office was active in calling for investigation into real estate fraud in Monroe County, Wilkins asked him to "be an advocate in your pursuit against real estate fraud in Monroe County by correcting the mistake the attorney general's office made by naming Wilkins & Associates Real Estate Inc. in the suit received and filed August 25, 2004."

Lewis faxed a letter to the attorney general, and called Wilkins back with the news that the charges would be dropped by October 18. The notification finally was received by Wilkins & Associates November 8, three months after the nightmare began.

"This error has caused major embarrassment to our company," says Wilkins. Being named in the suit also precluded him from providing expert testimony in court. "I hold the highest level of appraisal license in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," he says, and he is frequently sought as an expert witness. Because the opposing counsel might ask him if he were part of the suit alleging fraud, he couldn't put his credentials or a trial in jeopardy. Since the charges are dropped, "That's gone now," he says.

Other consequences remain. "Although I cannot measure the full extent of the damage," notes Wilkins, "we have heard first hand that our competitors, especially in the Mount Pocono area, were using the article against Wilkins & Associates Real Estate and advising customers and clients not to deal with our office because we are under investigation by the attorney general's office."

He believes it was a case of "guilty until proven innocent." The soft effect of the suit was the questions his neighbors, personal friends and business clients might have because of the legal action.

He didn't realize just how aware the community was of the lawsuit until an article reporting that Wilkins & Associates was exonerated appeared on the front page of The Pocono Record. "So many people called us to say, 'Congratulations, the charges are dropped,' " says Wilkins. The others named in the suit remain parties and are awaiting trial.