Keith Ellison sues controversial Lakeville developer Nolosha
Nolosha is still hoping to acquire Feeding Our Future-linked property next month.
State attorney general Keith Ellison announced a lawsuit on Wednesday against a controversial housing developer with plans for a Lakeville development. The headline:
Attorney General Ellison files fraud lawsuit to protect Somali immigrant families
Ellison sues property development company in response to reports of fraud from the public
To be clear, Ellison has filed a civil complaint, not a criminal complaint. The named defendants are Nolosha Development LLC of Eden Prairie and its CEO, Abdiwali Abdullahi. The lawsuit was filed in Hennepin County court. No hearing date has been set, as of yet.
Back in April, I wrote this piece about the proposed project, which would involve residential construction on an undeveloped 36-acre parcel off of I-35 in Lakeville, Dakota County.
The Nolosha Lakeville project website is still active. The crux of Ellison’s 17-page complaint is that the company has accepted $25,000 deposits from 160 or so families and the project has yet to substantially move forward.
That would equal $4 million in deposits. However, Ellison states (p. 10, paragraph 27) that only $1 million has been collected. Moreover, the deposits were intended to reserve an individual lot for a single-family home within the project footprint. As the project is currently conceived, no single-family homes will be built, only multi-family apartment buildings.
Of more immediate concern is the ownership of the land. Nolosha maintains that it has a purchase agreement in place and a closing date set for November 10.
However, as we noted back in April, that parcel is subject to a forfeiture proceeding in Federal court. The U.S. Attorney maintains that the parcel’s current owners purchased the land with proceeds from the Feeding Our Future scandal.
Neither Nolosha nor anyone working there has been linked to the free-food scandal.
The lawsuit defendants have 21 days to respond.