Audio By Carbonatix
Sean Healy‘s “Riviera Manor” in the Weston Hills Country Club was a veritable Ponzi playground, a seven-bedroom mansion that both headquartered the scam and hosted its trappings. The court turned the property over to Melanie Damian’s Miami receivership on December 4, but it wasn’t until this June that the property received a written offer for $2.46 million — $500,000 more than the appraisal value. But before the home can be officially sold, a judge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, must approve the transaction by month’s end.
“The judge is looking at it on July 28, and he promised it’d be less than a week before his decision,” says Doreen Marina, the property’s broker and owner of Marina Realty Group in Aventura.
Normally, Marina could just close the deal — but for this sale,
she had
to gather research to prove to the judge of the U.S. District Court in
Harrisburg that it was a good sale. Healy was tried in Pennsylvania
because the majority of his unwitting Ponzi investors lived in the
suburb of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The court will distribute the proceeds of
the home’s sale to Healy’s Ponzi victims.
In a motion filed just this Monday, Damian estimated
that Marina put in 250 hours and
gave more than 50 tours through the home’s gold-latticed living room.
Dozens of buyers (several whose names can be found on the Miami Dolphins
roster) peeked in the office where Healy defrauded his investors and
the bedroom Healy shared with his beautiful wife, Shalese.But
the luxurious home wasn’t an easy sell. First, there was that little
thing called the housing bust. Damian also found significant roof and
kitchen plumbing leaks that has caused water damage in the property (it
is being fixed).When Healy moved out, the water got
turned off, and everything from his swimming pool to
the custom-installed driveway fountain turned a sickly green — and stayed
that way as recently as April while potential buyers were being whisked
through.About that time, the water was turned back on, and
as repairs have continued, Riviera Mansion once again sparkled. But
homeowners’ insurance, electricity, water, property taxes, and other fun
expenses have cost more than $7,000 a month for the receivership and,
ultimately, the court.
Marina received several verbal offers and
one written offer for $2.3 million before the $2.46 million offer put
forth for the court’s consideration Monday. “They decided where they
wanted to live,” says Marina, explaining that the buyers have family in
the Westin Hills neighborhood. “In this case, it was location, location,
location.”
To prove to the court that $2.46 million was a
reasonable amount to accept, Marina had to gather research on the
purchase price per square footage of homes in the neighborhood and in
nearby neighborhoods. “I got the highest price per square foot in all the
subdivisions: Weston Hills, the Reserves, Windmill Ranch, Windmill
Lakes… It was a coup,” Marina says.
Marina expects that the
judge will rule on the proposed sale by month’s end and doesn’t
anticipate any objections. As for whether the mansion’s history
as a Ponzi hotbed affected the sale, Marina says no: “It didn’t have a
negative or positive impact. People knew about it, but nobody cares.”
While
new residents may be moving into Riviera Manor next month, Sean Healy
is serving his 16-year sentence in a federal prison in Texas.
