Palmera Properties Found to be Alive and Kicking in 2011
The Palmera Properties story has all the ingredients of the ordinary run-of-the-mill property investment bungle: dishonest real estate agents, contractual misrepresentation, down payments never paid down (kept by agents), nor refunded (to our clients, that we know), unbuilt properties, invalid contract reselling, sluggish courts, bumbling judges unkeen on seeing instances of criminal misappropriation when even a child would see them, frustrated lawyers and very angry buyers.
The difference perhaps with other similar rip-off stories is that Palmera Properties, after leaving around one hundred or so clients with no money and no property, still operates, under the same trading name, although they will not admit to it unless, that is, you pretend to be a willing buyer from Scotland and awake their greed.
Today’s story is about an undercover operation triggered by a client who, having been awarded an unenforceable favourable ruling by a civil court in Torremolinos (due to clever concealment of assets), discovers that Palmera Properties, a now one-man band led by Jesus Gotardo, is still operating.
From the new Palmera Properties Website, Mr. Gotardo has resumed his activities, the same ones that merited an arrest warrant being issued by a Madrid Court (he is currently on bail).
Such cheek could not go uninvestigated, and so we commissioned a Brighton-born journalist with a very plausible rhotic Scottish inflection, who, purporting to be a property investor, met up with two agents sent by Gotardo, a meeting arranged through the above website by a mysterious “Ruben”. And what we found is that Mr. Gotardo, of all people, is again dealing in real estate, notwithstanding his history of calamity, his huge indebtedness to creditors (five from our practise among them) and his firm intention of not repairing the immense damage caused to his ex-clients other than by offering…another property.
Sharp Gotardo smelt a rat an hour after the meeting finished and was quick to send “Mark Biggs”, “the journalist from Inverness”, a threatening email, which I quote below:
Dear Mr Biggs
I am very surprised of the report we got from your meeting. it seems that you hide the fact that you are an existing client. We are here to help with any issues. Palmera as a company is facing a bankrupcy procedure. We just acted as agents and we dont hold any deposits as these were paid to developers. We can help if you honestly let us know your situation without making our friend to loose time.
Given the circustances and based on previous experiences we have no other option than keep record of your false intentioned emails and testimony of our friend independent company and put these events under the knowledge of spanish authorities to avoid any threat or errors in your behave in this situation ( last people tried these tactics spend 2 weeks in spanish prison i can send you sentence if you want me to)
Should you require our help please be honest an we will help as we can. What is the development you paid for and we will give you full report.
Palmera is not based anymore in malaga and we are just assisting our people with some relations of friend compamies ready to help. To abuse of these good will factor will only generate problems and lack of help for your situation.
thanks
Ruben
I wonder if that Spanish prison he is talking about is the same that gladly opened the doors to him… But as the meeting is the central theme of this post and a picture is worth a thousand words, we decided that we had to film the meeting, which you can now watch.
Video
Start: Lady says that Gotardo is not her boss, that he´s just someone (contact) who sends the client. When asked if he is an agent, after thinking up a response during 3 seconds, she says that she thinks so…
Verónica is who receives emails from Gotardo (Ruben for us).
0’52”: Lady says that Gotardo and “Ruben” are friends of the owner of her company. She confirms that Palmera Properties makes money out of this and that some commission would go to Palmera Properties. Young Verónica, on the contrary, says that Palmera is just a contact by “friendship”. Lady again confirms that it is a split commission deal because Gotardo is who brings the client. Veronica says Gotardo could not come as he had another meeting. She then adds that he has nothing to do with this.
1’58”: Palmera guys are friends of the President of Mangle. When asked again about the commission, Veronica smiles, doubts for a second, and says that she thinks so, but that she is not sure.
I am a victim of Jesus Gortardo I think I did meet him in one of our interveiws in benalmadnia wher he tried to sell us more property to compensate the 79,000 euros we already handed over. our legal firm has had no joy as of yet!
hi there my lawyers pannone took jesus cortardo to court in 2008 to recover deposit on a property the should have been built around 2004 in Almeria we won toe case against him and when the judge told him to repay all deposit and interests we were told that there was no money left the judge then told gortardo that he was looking at a jail sentence if he did not pay us back, he then offered to find us another property in Alicante which we went to look at which we accepted it was better to accept this than having no apartment and loseing our deposits,
we are now happy with our appatrment in Alicante although it cost us 20.000 euros more having to take him to court, our lawyers who are based in Manchester were brilliant.
kind regards,
alan.
@alan culshaw
If you dont mind me asking how much did you get charged to fight the case?
Hi Alan Isent a message to Pannone they said they do not deal with spanish property !
Is this still on going as these crooks did us out of sixty thousand pounds my husband’s redundancy money.