The middle initial made my stomach drop because it was mine. Not my full name, not a similar name, mine with the same middle initial I had used on every document for six years. My lawyer pulled the state filing and the company had been incorporated in 2019, the same year as the management contract I supposedly signed. I told her I had never owned a company and had never had any business interest outside my regular job. She asked me whether anyone had ever asked me to sign something that looked like an authorization for a management company. I said no. Then she showed me the signature on the incorporation paperwork. It wasn’t just similar to mine. It was my signature, including the little mark I make at the end when I sign quickly.
We requested the original management contract and all eleven amendments, not scans. The association’s attorney initially said the originals were unavailable, but my lawyer reminded him that the contract had been submitted as part of a lawsuit and therefore had to be preserved. Two days later they appeared. I went through every page at her office, and there were signatures everywhere. Mine was on the contract, three amendments, a rate increase, and a renewal. I knew I hadn’t signed any of them. Then she noticed the dates. The first contract was supposedly signed on a Tuesday afternoon in 2019, but I had been at the hospital that entire day because my sister was having surgery. My lawyer pulled the hospital records, and there was no question I couldn’t have been at the association office. Then she turned one page over and found something written in pencil on the back: a note from the previous management company saying the board had been instructed to “keep ownership details confidential until transition is complete.”
We went back through the company filing and found that the two owners had never been disclosed to the association membership. One was the former president’s husband. The other was listed under my name, but the mailing address wasn’t mine. It was an office suite I’d never heard of, and the person who had signed the lease for that suite was the same lawyer who represented the association. My lawyer asked the state for the original incorporation documents and found a second signature attached to mine — a witness signature from someone who had supposedly watched me sign. I knew that name too. It was the woman who had replaced me as secretary after I resigned, and according to the filing, she had witnessed my signature three years before I ever met her.
