Chapman backstories
Frank Chapman influenced the Boca Raton City Council election even before he became a candidate.
Late last year, Chapman commissioned two mailers that attacked the business record of Armand Grossman, who had filed papers in November to run for Seat C, which Constance Scott is leaving because of term limits. The mailers cited penalties by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation as a reason that voters couldn’t trust Grossman. He dropped out.
Chapman’s own record, however, includes incidents that drew the attention of professional examiners, regulators and government agencies and involve him directly or indirectly. They are contained in documents that I received from a supporter of Jamie Sauer, one of Chapman’s two opponents in Tuesday’s election.
Since Chapman raised the issue of personal conduct regarding another candidate, these incidents deserve a similar review. The first began in 1993, after Chapman—who was living in Portage, Ohio—passed the Ohio Bar Exam and applied for admission to the Bar. His application was denied because, according to documents filed with the Ohio Supreme Court, Chapman had been unable “to prove his good character and fitness to practice law.”
The problem, according to the documents, stemmed from a civil lawsuit by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office against Chapman, his father and others “for alleged violations of the Ohio Sales Practices Act. . .” Chapman’s father owned a carpet and upholstery cleaning business, and Chapman had told the Attorney General’s Office that he would testify against his father. Chapman had worked “periodically” for the business between 1983 and 1991, when he was 24.
In an affidavit for the attorney general’s office, according to the documents, Chapman said he taught new employees in his father’s company a sales plan taken from his uncle’s carpet/upholstery business in Florida. Under that plan, “salespersons who increased the amount of a quoted price. . .received a 28 percent commission on the increased price.” Salespersons were “directed” to push estimates higher and then offer “illusory discounts.” Technicians “routinely drycleaned fabrics that did not require drycleaning, in order to increase the contract price.”
In addition, Chapman’s “personal expenses, including law school tuition, were paid by the business,” and Chapman “transferred motor vehicles used in the business and titled in his name to fictitious corporations.” Chapman did not admit or deny wrongdoing. Nevertheless, he was “permanently enjoined from certain consumer practices, including performing substandard work, bait-and-switch tactics and high-pressure sales techniques or tactics prohibited by law. . .” In addition to testifying, Chapman had to pay restitution of $2,500, forfeit a computer system and pay a $20,000 fine, $7,500 of which was suspended.
After that, the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness appointed a hearing panel to rule on Chapman’s application to the Bar. At the hearing, according to the documents, Chapman “admitted having taught techniques for selling unneeded services” and to never getting a W-2 or 1099 for his work with the company. He “stated that in August or September 1992 he began to believe certain aspects of the business were wrong, and he sought to disassociate himself from the business after that time.” The panel, though, found Chapman’s “1992 conversion ‘from his previous pattern of highly questionable ethical and outright illegal behavior. . .too recent to be convincing.’ ” Chapman’s application was denied. He appealed, and got the time for when he could reapply moved up. Chapman eventually was admitted to the Ohio Bar. He is a Member in Good Standing of the Florida Bar, though he has been calling himself a “retired lawyer.” His listed work address is his home address.
The second incident began in 2002, when Chapman was running his own law firm in Ohio. The firm took the case of a couple that had been injured in a car crash as passengers. The case was assigned to one of the lawyers in Chapman’s firm.
The coupled later sued the lawyer, Chapman and the firm for overcharging them on fees. The case was settled when the firm reduced its fees. The firm also paid the couple roughly $20,000 from its malpractice insurance.
In 2009, the lawyer was reprimanded for misconduct in that case. His defense in part was that Chapman controlled the fee schedule for the firm. The Board of Commissioners and Grievances of the Ohio Supreme Court, however, took no action against Chapman. I reached the lawyer by phone this week. Of the incident, he said he was “not interested in discussing it.”
The third incident began in 2004, when Chapman challenged a ruling by the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals that he had failed to pay roughly $27,000 in taxes on the purchase of a 43-foot yacht.
Chapman claimed that the tax had been paid through the dealer, but the tax board ruled that Chapman had “failed to provide any evidence of any tax paid.” Chapman claimed that the boat had been in Florida, not Ohio, but the board ruled that Chapman had listed Cleveland as the home port, and that the boat had been docked in Port Clinton, east of Toledo. In 2005, the board rejected Chapman’s appeal.
The fourth incident began early in the last decade, when Chapman’s law firm got what would be a $35 million contract with the federal government to sell foreclosed homes in Ohio and Michigan owned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Disputes between the firm and the government led them to sue each other, with Chapman claiming that the government breached its contact and the government claiming that Chapman violated the False Claims Act. In November 2013, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Marian Horn ruled that Chapman’s firm had committed fraud related to inspections of four homes and fined the firm $44,000. Chapman appealed the fine, and lost. This week, he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he planned to drop the appeal, though he denies the allegations in the government’s lawsuit.
Wednesday afternoon, I met with Chapman to discuss these incidents. He did not want me to tape the interview.
Of the work for his father’s company, Chapman said, “You don’t know anything is deceptive when you grow up in it.” He says it happened when he was young. The whole thing “made me a better person.” Regarding the lawyer in his firm who was reprimanded, Chapman said, “He got himself in trouble and tried to blame anybody he could. Regarding the taxes on his boat, Chapman claims that the board mixed up two Bertram yachts – one that he was selling and one that he was buying. “I showed them the evidence,” he said, “and they wouldn’t believe it.” Regarding his dispute with the federal government, Chapman portrays himself as a contractor trying to play fair and do good work when there were accusations that the Department of Housing and Urban Development was steering contracts to friends of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. His firm and the government traded lawsuits over the contract for years.
Chapman notes that while the judge’s 78-page ruling singled out four houses, his firm dealt with roughly 20,000 houses in all. The judge, Chapman speculates, thought that “we had been compensated enough. And she wrote (the ruling) in such a way that we lost the appeal.” He added, “ I didn’t want to write another check for $100,000 or $200,000 over a fine of $44,000.”
In 2012, when Chapman ran unsuccessfully against then-incumbent Anthony Majhess, the Majhess campaign sent out mailers raising the Bar admission and tax issue. Neither, though, got a thorough look in the press. The legal dispute with the government didn’t get any attention, probably because the case had not been settled. The record and Chapman’s response now are there for voters ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
Netanyahu follow-up
If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress on Tuesday contained nothing little new about Iran, it produced the visuals Netanyahu wanted for Israeli voters with elections set for March 17.
Those voters saw American lawmakers regularly applaud Netanyahu. They saw Netanyahu, as he invoked the Holocaust, salute Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night,” which most people consider the seminal work on the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate the Jews. Surely no one, including Netanyahu, believed his comment that the speech wasn’t intended to be political.
As they were before the speech, local lawmakers and national Jewish groups with offices in this area are trying to balance support for Israel and the Jewish people with the prime minister’s attempt to influence U.S. foreign policy.
The American Jewish Committee, which issued no statement before the speech, praised Netanyahu’s “clarion call for achieving the best possible deal to prevent a nuclear Iran.” The key word there is “possible.” Members of the Obama administration aren’t the only ones who believe that Netanyahu’s demand that Iran have no uranium enrichment capacity is impossible. The Bush administration tried that all-or-nothing approach in 2003 and failed. AJC Director David Harris said, “We urge everyone to read the Prime Minister’s speech and consider it on its merits.”
A spokeswoman for Rep. Lois Frankel issued this noncommittal statement: “Our commitment to strengthening the U.S.-Israeli relationship and preventing a nuclear Iran has always and should continue to receive the overwhelming bipartisan support this critical issue deserves.” By mid-afternoon Wednesday, I had not received a response to my question about whether Frankel agrees with Netanyahu that Obama would “sacrifice the future for the present” with a deal. Unlike some Jewish Democrats, Frankel attended the speech.
So did Deutch, who also is a Democrat and also is Jewish. His statement went further than Frankel’s. In it, Deutch said, “Congress must play an increasingly active and vocal role in negotiations over ending Iran’s nuclear program as the deadline (this month for a framework agreement; June 30 for a final deal) for negotiations to reach an acceptable compromise quickly approaches.” After Netanyahu’s speech, that role is certain. Whether that role will be helpful or harmful is uncertain.
Anniversary note
Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the blog. Thanks to Boca Raton magazine for allowing me to do it, and thanks to those who have been following it.
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You can email Randy Schultz at randy@bocamag.com
For more City Watch blogs, click here.About the Author
Randy Schultz was born in Hartford, Conn., and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1974. He has lived in South Florida since then, and in Boca Raton since 1985. Schultz spent nearly 40 years in daily journalism at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, most recently as editorial page editor at the Post. His wife, Shelley, is director of The Learning Network at Pine Crest School. His son, an attorney, and daughter-in-law and three grandchildren also live in Boca Raton. His daughter is a veterinarian who lives in Baltimore.
