One bit of fallout from the crumbling financial empire of Dan Harkey, the husband of termed-out state Assembly member and Board of Equalization hopeful Diane Harkey (R-Dana Point), is how the CEO's Point Center Financial fucked a golf course.
A Vancouver, Washington, resident who along with her husband bought a vacation unit off the first tee of the “historic” Palm Springs Country Club, relates the sad tale …
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Assemblywoman Diane Harkey's Husband Dan Ordered to Pay $11.6 mil for Ponzi-Like Scheme
The Desert Sun, which covers the Palm Springs area, has a great story–well, great as in very, very sad and then very, very vindicated–on the elderly victims of Harkey's Point Center Financial (PCF) fraud scheme.
The entire saga surely makes one take pause when you notice that Diane Harkey touted her professional role at PCF and writes in her 2014 Board of Equalization bid, “Skills acquired in my previous career spanning 30 years in Banking and Corporate Finance, provided me with an in-depth understanding of finance, business, taxation, and economics.”
She was dropped as a defendant in the PCF fraud case.
“After reading your news article on the Dan Harkey Point Center Financial trial, I would like to state that more than just investors were left high and dry on the properties PCF purchased or made loans on,” Donna Buckinger writes in an email. “I speak for myself in saying that what PCF and Dan Harkey allowed to happen to one of the properties was a travesty and should be considered criminal.”
She provides a view of Palm Springs Country Club's first tee area before PCF was done with property …
Pretty nice, eh?
On the next page are shots from the links just two years later, during and after PCF's supposed rehabilitation of the property …
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Buckinger: “When Dan Harkey, as CEO of PCF loaned $13 million then $19.5 million to the developer of the Palm Springs Country Club, which transferred liens from another property onto the historic golf course, Point Center Financial failed to maintain judiciary responsibility of the property as well as the investors' money.”
Buckinger: “The historic golf course is now a vast wasteland of dust where once a historic golf course with hundreds of trees surrounded it and the neighborhood. Neighbors watched as over 300 trees were allowed to die over the past five plus years. The value of our homes have been affected due to the loss of the golf course (and not the downturn of our economy, as Harkey has stated) while he refused to maintain the property if not the golf course.”
Buckinger: “The City of Palm Springs filed code violation after code violation and then filed a lawsuit against Point Center Financial through Harkey but still nothing happened to save the trees and salvage the property. It was a classic way to practice defacto demolition on the golf course affecting both it and surrounding property values.”
Point Center Financial, whose investors were told Palm Springs Country Club was worth $30 million, sold the golf course for $1 million last year.
Something to remember when a certain politician boasts of bringing business savvy to the next elected office.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.