Bryan Prehoda and Luis Belevan were running a pretty unsuccessful Scottsdale-based mortgage-relief service — so unsuccessful, in fact, as to constitute fraud and a judgment against them for almost $29 million. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge entered the default judgment this week, ordering Prehoda and Belevan to reimburse fees…
The Arizona Legislature has a knack for something: ruining the reputation of the entire state via a collection of embarrassing, symbolic bills.Last week, Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill that makes doctors who perform abortions based on sex or gender criminals, which is fine except there’s no evidence to support…
By now you probably know about the Fiesta Bowl’s decision to ax CEO John Junker following an internal investigation into how he was spending the organization’s money, but it’s the alleged illegal contributions to the campaigns of Valley politicos that has Arizona Democrats fuming.Junker, the report shows, racked up a…
Arizona’s conservative, anti-immigrant politics help make it a “failed state,” says the Boston Review in a lengthy article published today. The piece makes plenty of good points, but gets watered down by writer Tom Barry’s overly simplistic solution. If Arizona simply raised taxes, elected liberal leaders, embraced the federal government as…
Arizona apparently deserves its reputatation as a mecca for low-paying jobs, ranking 40th in an economic analysis among states for per-capita income. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports, according to the Biz Journal this morning, that the average income for state residents if $34,999 — “well below the national average of $40,584.”…
The only “first-aid”45-year-old Samuel Cresante will be receiving for the next several years will be at a prison infirmary. Cresante was sentenced in federal court this morning to 19 years in prison for a string of at least 12 bank robberies lamely dubbed by the FBI’s bandit-naming department as the…
If you live in Arizona and get pissed off every time you look at your bank statement, you may want to consider re-locating — a recent study finds that Arizona has the emptiest bank accounts of any state in the entire country.According to the study, conducted by Pitney Bowes Business…
Arizona looks like a potential deadbeat to the world-famous Moody’s credit-rating service. Citing concerns over a sales-tax increase set to expire in mid-2013 and a budget that relies on the federal government to make changes caused Moody’s to downgrade Arizona’s outlook this week from “stable” to “negative.” Moody’s affirmed…
The man pictured to the right is 28-year-old Ezequiel Gardea Diaz, and police say that over the weekend he whipped it out and started “shaking” it in front of three young girls.According to court documents obtained by New Times, about 5 p.m. Saturday, the three girls, ages 9, 10, and…
The number of food stamp recipients in Arizona has increased drastically in the past year, to the point that now more than one million people are eating government funded meals.That means about one in every six Arizonans is on food stamps.KTAR spoke with Steve Meissner from the Arizona Department of…
By now, the sale of the Tempe’s Centerpoint Towers was supposed to be a done deal. Workers should be buzzing all over the 22- and 30-story towers, which have sat unfinished and vacant (except for the occasional trespassers) since 2008. Zaremba Group, the Ohio-based company that wants to buy the towers, expected construction…
SB 1070 has gone into effect, albeit a neutered version, and the sky didn’t come crashing to the ground, the streets didn’t fill with blood, and Latinos haven’t been rounded up like cattle — yet, anyway.Despite the world not coming to an end when Arizona’s controversial, new immigration law took…
How does spending nearly $150,000 to feed cocaine to monkeys stimulate the economy? Senator John McCain would argue that it doesn’t — it’s just one of several ways to waste taxpayer dollars via President Obama’s stimulus program.McCain, along with Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, unveiled their study of the stimulus program…
One of the Valley’s most prominent entrepreneurial businesses, Terri’s Consign and Design Furnishings, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after years of complaints that it wasn’t paying its consignment customers…
The snazziest apartment complex in the Valley, Grigio Tempe Town Lake, has filed for bankruptcy and is seeking an emergency court ruling that will keep residents’ services online. An attorney working for Grigio’s developer, Susan Freeman of Lewis and Roca, says she’s confident the bankruptcy judge will approve continued payments for the many services…
The Centerpoint towers at 6th Street and Maple in Tempe are going back up for sale, this time listed by realtor CB Richard Ellis. The history of the five-acre property and towers, and their financial collapse, were covered extensively in our October 15 edition. Earlier this month, ML Manager LLC, bought…
Got a few million bucks to blow? If so, you can try your luck on a couple of unfinished condominium towers in Tempe. The Centerpoint towers and the five acres of land beneath them at Sixth Street and Maple Avenue are scheduled to be up for open auction starting Thursday. Typically, such auctions put the…
In the most recent blow to Maricopa County’s reputation throughout the country, the latest jobs report is out, and it ain’t pretty for the Valley.Among the county’s other embarrassing, um, problems — law enforcement and prosecutorial, mainly — Maricopa County is now the No. 2 county in the country for net job…
National unemployment numbers for the month of December are in, and they aren’t pretty for Arizona.The numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics find that Hispanics and construction workers were the hardest hit by the sluggish economy, and in case you hadn’t noticed, Arizona happens to have both a…
Bashas’ announced the locations today of all 14 stores it plans on closing by October 10. The family-owned chain filed for bankruptcy last month, but vows to stay afloat as a company and even improve its remaining 130 stores. As the Arizona Republic reported last week, the company is using bankruptcy…
