Does anyone trust these people with their careers?
*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***
FEDERAL GRAND JURY INDICTS CHAIR OF CORRUPT WEST VIRGINIA LICENSING BOARD
(July 26, 2024) – A federal grand jury in Charleston, West Virginia, handed up an indictment this week charging the chairman of the West Virginia Real Estate Appraiser Board, Dean Dawson, of bilking the U.S. Internal Revenue Service of employee withholdings and failing to file personal tax returns for years.
The indictment
charges Dawson of defrauding the IRS of Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes that were withheld from employees’ paychecks as he failed to file quarterly tax returns for those withholdings. Though Dawson allegedly provided his employees with Forms W-2, he did not file those forms with the Social Security Administration. Dawson allegedly used his business bank account to pay his personal expenses and directed funds to his wife who was not an employee. According to the indictment, from June 2010 through July 2024, while operating his real estate appraisal business, Dawson did not file any tax forms with the IRS, including Forms 1040 or Forms 941 for his firm.
Dawson was charged wit
h 19 counts of failing to collect and pay employment taxes and six counts of willfully failing to file personal tax returns.
The West Virginia Real Estate Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board was previously implicated in a scheme in which members had joined hands with a crony law firm that had managed to get its tentacles into the statehouse in Charleston. Incentivized financially by the law firm to discipline certain licensees, board members were then able to earn money as expert witnesses when those licensees were later sued by the law firm. Attorneys who haunted the state capital were said to work as “scouts” for the crony law firm, always on the lookout for appraisers to sue.
In an attempt to shut down the racket and dislodge the law firm from the halls of the statehouse, West Virginia House Bill
4285 was signed into law and took effect in 2022.
The law banned any member of the West Virginia Real Estate Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board from disciplining a licensee and then hiring on as an expert witness in a lawsuit involving the licensee. The statute attempted to remove the board members’ financial incentive to penalize appraisers by eliminating the possibility of future revenue attached to their disciplinary actions.
Board members under Dawson also reportedly helped orchestrate below-market and inflated appraisals on behalf of the law firm.
Daniels, West Virginia-based appraiser Lori Noble was the driving force behind the long-overdue statute. She worked with lead sponsor Delegate Brandon Steele (R). Co-sponsors of the bill were Delegates Geoff Foster (R) and Josh Booth (R).
The West Virginia appraiser licensing board has a track record of scofflaw activities.
From 2010 to 2019, board members accepted tens of thousands of dollars in free airfares, hotel rooms, meals, course materials and other things of value from a Washington, D.C., publisher known as the Appraisal Foundation. During that time, the same personnel, according to a state legislative auditor’s report, violated state law in a way that benefitted the publisher by streamlining use of the publisher’s standards but unlawfully muzzling citizens of the state in the process. In addition, four of the regulators – current and former appointees to the board – failed to disclose the gifts in required filings with the West Virginia Ethics Commission.
Members of West Virginia state boards, commissions, and agencies who are appointed by the governor must file a Financial Disclosure Statement reporting gifts, including meals and beverages, or anything with $100 or more in monetary value, from a person, business or organization that has a direct and immediate interest in governmental activity over which the board member has control. Any person who knowingly fails or refuses to file a required Financial Disclosure Statement is guilty of a misdemeanor pursuant to West Virginia Code
§6B-2-10(c).
The board has been violating West Virginia law in other ways, as well. In 2017, it was discovered the board had hired unauthorized individuals as de facto board members. Board members were believed to have effectively delegated their duties to doppelgängers.
If convicted, Dawson faces a maximum penalty of
five years in prison for each employment tax count and a maximum penalty of one year in prison for each count of failure to file a tax return. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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Jeremy Bagott is a real estate appraiser and former newspaperman. His most recent book, “
The Ichthyologist’s Guide to the Subprime Meltdown,” is a concise almanac that distills the cataclysmic financial crisis of 2007-2008 to its essence. This pithy guide to the upheaval includes essays, chronologies, roundups and key lists, weaving together the stories of the politics-infused Freddie and Fannie; the doomed Wall Street investment banks Lehman and Bear Stearns; the dereliction of duty by the Big Three credit-rating services; the mayhem caused by the shadowy nonbank lenders; and the massive government bailouts. It provides a rapid-fire succession of “ah-hah” moments as it lays out the meltdown, convulsion by convulsion.