MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Federal authorities on Wednesday raided the Ohio home owned by the CEO of Millennia Companies, which manages the troubled Memphis senior living complex Serenity Towers, and other properties nationwide.
Agents from the HUD Office of Inspector General and USDA Office of Inspector General executed a search warrant Wednesday at the house of Millennia CEO Frank Sinito, according to the police chief in Waite’s Hill, Ohio, whose officers assisted in the raid.
Federal agents spent eight hours at Sinito’s property. Neither he nor his wife were home at the time. The search warrant is sealed, but housing advocates say it’s a sign of how serious the problem is.
“It sounds like this raid is a sign that they found even more than they were bargaining for,” said Foluke Nunn, Community Organizer with American Friends Service Committee.
AFSC has been working with Millennia tenants across the country demanding change from the owners and HUD.
Foluke added, “Honestly, I am just so excited to receive this news because as you know from your reporting around Memphis Towers, this has been a long road, an incredibly long road. And I think that to me, this is a signal that HUD is willing to create consequences for Millennia, and it also, I think to me, signals that they found something big.”
Sinito’s sprawling, $3.7 million estate sits roughly 30 miles outside Cleveland, the home of Millennia’s headquarters.
It’s a world away from some of the properties owned by the company.
The photo below shows the charred, gaping hole left behind after a deadly fire at Shorter College Gardens in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
There were also collapsed, mold covered ceilings at Sunset Village in Cleveland, Mississippi where a mother and child died after a gas leak.
WREG has shown viewers the broken elevators that leave disabled seniors trapped inside at the bed bug-infested Serenity Towers in Memphis.
Mold, no hot water, bed bugs and leaks make up a long list of issues found at Serenity Towers during a recent inspection a few weeks ago.
The high-rise for low-income seniors on Highland Street was recently declared a chronic nuisance by a Shelby County Environmental Court judge.
Millennia Companies is the group in charge at the taxpayer-funded properties mentioned above with mounting problems across the country.
While Millennia is in the process of selling them, the company owns or operates more than 200 federally subsidized properties across the country, like Serenity Towers in Memphis, where its contract one year was just under $1 million for housing assistance payments.
In March, HUD barred Millennia from doing business with the federal government until 2028, accusing the company of “financial mismanagement of tenant security deposits.”
The agency also demanded repayment of what it called “misappropriated funds.”
“I applaud HUD for taking action in this way and for finally cracking down on this company that just for such a long time, did whatever it is that they wanted to do in order to line their pockets with as much federal money as possible,” Foluke told WREG.
Nunn says they’ll continue to push HUD to preserve tenants’ rights, including the funding attached to contracts no matter who’s in charge next at Millennia’s properties.
As for what happens next with Sinito, she told the WREG Investigators, “They deserve whatever consequences come their way for all of the suffering and trauma that they have put tenants through.”
An attorney says Sinito and Millennia are cooperating with the investigation. WREG reached out to the Office of Inspector General for both HUD and the USDA and we’re waiting to hear back.
Representatives for Serenity Towers are scheduled to be back in Shelby County Environmental Court on Tuesday, Oct. 29.