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Developer Who Tried to Buy Laconia State School Pleads Guilty to Fraud

Robynne Alexander, the real estate developer who offered the state a too-good-to-be-true $21.5 million for the Laconia State School property, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal count of wire fraud in the United States District Court in Concord.

Alexander’s business model of offering eye-popping returns to her investors, as much as 80 percent, was actually part of a scheme to stay ahead of her creditors as her real estate empire crumbled, according to court records.

Alexander now faces up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced at a later date. She’s already agreed to pay more than $3 million in restitution to her dozens of victims. Many of them gave Alexander their entire retirement savings, thinking she would help them make their fortunes.

Alexander presented herself as a California real estate success story when she moved to New England and taught classes as Real Estate Investor Goddess. Alexander showed people how to make big money on large-scale developments, such as apartment complexes, resorts, and even entire village complexes. In reality, she was a small-time player who flipped a few houses before she started teaching.

But someone did learn something in her classes; Alexander learned which of her students to rope in as investors for her various real estate schemes. She launched several different LLCs starting in 2018 using money from her former students, according to court records.

Under her Raxx‑LeMay, LLC., Alexander got investors to back the purchase and redevelopment of two commercial properties in Manchester. But even with her students, Alexander could only come up with $700,000 of the necessary $2 million for the purchase. Instead of giving the money back with interest to her investors, as was the agreement, Alexander bought the properties with investor money from other projects and high-interest loans. In a classic Ponzi-scheme move, Alexander paid returns to some Raxx-LeMay investors with the investor money from other LLCs she controlled.

After that, things took off for Alexander—but not for her investors. She transferred the Raxx-LeMay properties to another LLC, leaving that business and its investors $850,000 in debt and with no assets.

Alexander’s Elm and Baker, LLC., netted $750,000 in investor money to convert a Manchester property into apartments. Instead, Alexander used more than half that money to repay other, unrelated investors and her own personal loans, ultimately leading to foreclosure on the Elm and Baker property in 2023. 

Her biggest dream, the $21.5 million Laconia State School development, would have been a resort village with retail. It was the winning bid for the property. But for some reason, Alexander couldn’t close the deal. 

Alexander’s winning bid garnered negative attention as people close to the deal began asking questions about her financing. At the same time, one of her failed Manchester developments turned into a lawsuit. Former Gov. Chris Sununu recently said the state gave Alexander multiple opportunities to come up with the money before finally moving on.

“And after three or four extensions, we’re like, ‘Okay, enough is enough.’ And we pulled the plug, rightly so,” Sununu said.

Behind the scenes, Alexander struggled to raise $250,000 from investors for the $21.5 million purchase. At that point, she used $75,000 of that money on herself, including a month-long trip to Paris, Barcelona, Valencia, Nassau, Florida, and New Orleans.

Soon after the Laconia State School deal fell apart, Alexander was under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation. As part of an agreement with New Hampshire authorities, Alexander will repay $96,000 to New Hampshire victims. She also agreed to give up any licensing to sell securities anywhere, and agreed not to be head of any company anywhere ever again.

Sununu gives credit to then-Executive Councilor Ted Gatsas (R-District 4) for protecting the state from getting more deeply involved with Alexander during the Laconia property process.

“Gatsas was one of the councilors who said, ‘We could have a problem here,” Sununu said during a recent radio appearance.

As the Alexander deal dragged out, “Ted was just really smart in terms of what we were potentially walking into, and putting up red flags for us. He really drove the message to get the state to pivot. And it was clearly the right thing to do.”

Failed Laconia State School Developer Scammed Millions From Victims

Robynne Alexander was known as a “Real Estate Investor Goddess,” who taught others how to make fortunes investing in property.

But the woman behind the failed $21.5 million bid for the Laconia State School property is now set to plead guilty in a federal fraud case after she allegedly stole millions from her former students, according to the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation.

“Many individuals put their entire retirement savings into the hands of Alexander, who abused their trust and enticed them with returns that she could not deliver,” said Michael Gallagher, Bureau staff attorney.

After investigations by the Bureau of Securities Regulation and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Alexander agreed to pay more than $3 million in restitution to her victims, in addition to the criminal charges filed in federal court. 

According to the Bureau’s consent order with Alexander, she took money from 30 people, many of whom she met through her investing classes. She touted her experience developing large projects like apartment complexes and retail developments without telling her investors that her short history in real estate mostly consisted of flipping houses.

Alexander created several LLCs for various projects and used investor money for some start-up costs, as well as high-interest loans from “nontraditional” lenders for the rest. She never told her investors about the loans, according to the consent order. She also didn’t tell them about using their money for her own personal expenses, fictitious payments to investors she liked, or a month-long vacation to Paris, Barcelona, Valencia, Nassau, Florida, and New Orleans.

Some investors were enticed by too-good-to-be-true 80 percent projected returns on their money. Her projects ran into trouble, and Alexander began paying some investors with money from other investors, the classic hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.

After Gov. Chris Sununu pushed for a law in 2021 to let him manage the sale of the Laconia State School property, Alexander put herself and one of her companies forward with a $21.5 million bid to turn the 600 acre property into a new village that included housing, retail, entertainment, hiking trails, and more. 

Alexander’s winning bid began getting negative attention as people close to the deal started asking questions about her financing. Her $21.5 million bid was far higher than the other offers the state received.

Sununu, guest hosting for Jack Heath’s radio show, said Friday as news broke that former Executive Councilor Ted Gatsas (R-District 4) gets credit for raising arms about Alexander.

“You know, Gatsas was one of the ones on the council that said, ‘We could have a problem here.’ And, you know, he really understood the financing of some of the things with that organization,” Sununu said.

After at least four deadlines passed for Alexander to close the Laconia deal, Sununu and the councilors moved on.

“And after three or four extensions, we’re like, ‘Okay, enough is enough.’ And we pulled the plug, rightly so. But Ted was one of the ones who was just really smart in terms of what we were potentially walking into. And [he] put up the red flags for us, and really drove the message to get us to pivot, and it was clearly the right thing to do.”

The state is currently working with a new investment group that has an offer to buy the property for $10 million.

The Laconia State School bid came apart just as Alexander’s whole business model imploded. 

“Eventually, the high interest rates from nontraditional lenders, various lawsuits, and the promised returns to investors caught up with [Alexander], and her scheme collapsed,” the consent order states.

Alexander is paying $3 million to victims through the SEC enforcement actions, and another $96,000 to victims through the New Hampshire Bureau investigation. She also agreed to give up any licensing to sell securities anywhere, and not to be head of any company anywhere.

“This settlement shows that people will be held accountable when they mishandle and misuse investor funds for their own personal gain at the expense of hard-working individuals who are simply trying to meet their retirement goals,” Gallagher said.

‘Election Day’-Ja Vu: Windham Ballot Problems Discovered

Here we go again. 

On the eve of the primary election came reports out of Windham that ballots are being folded with the crease going through the voting oval, apparently repeating the same errors that led to an extensive audit of the town’s ballot system after the 2020 election.

According to reports, absentee ballots sent to Windham voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary have been folded twice, with the creases going through the ovals. The same improper folds on absentee ballots in 2020 resulted in anomalous results and new state oversight of the vote.

Windham Town Clerk Nicole Merrill could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Town Hall staff said she was away at Windham High School setting up for the election.

Both Anna Fay with the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office, and Michael Garrity with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said state election monitors will be on hand Tuesday to make sure the election goes off smoothly.

“There will be an election monitor at the Windham polling place tomorrow. If there are any problems with improper folds or other issues, they will act accordingly,” Fay said.

Windham is one of three communities that will have state monitors in place to oversee the primary election due to multiple errors found in the 2020 voting process.

Windham, Bedford and Ward 6 in Laconia will all have election monitors in place In Windham, the audit found the vote total discrepancy was due to the improper folds. The folds in the paper ballots made it difficult for optical scan vote counters, AccuVote machines, to record the votes properly.

A state review also faulted local officials for compounding the errors by cutting corners, according to a January letter from New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and Secretary of State William Gardner to Windham town officials.

“(S)imply out, town election officials cut corners. Some of those shortcuts created errors — such as using an uncalibrated folding machine — which were unintentional and perhaps unforeseeable, but ultimately resulted in ballots not being accurately counted,” the letter states.

The state ended up paying at least $123,000 for the outside experts to audit Windham’s voting totals.

In Bedford, a months-long controversy over 190 ballots that were never counted resulted in the Secretary of State deciding the town will have a state-appointed official to oversee the September primary.

“As a result of the concerns and shortcomings described in this and our prior correspondences, the Attorney General makes a finding that the November 2020 General Election returns from Bedford had significant deficiencies,” Myles Matteson of the state Attorney General’s Election Law Unit wrote to Bedford town officials.

In Laconia, a joint investigation conducted by the Attorney General’s Office and the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office found that 179 ballots went uncounted after the 2020 general election. The errors in this case were blamed on Ward 6 moderator Tony Felch.

“The ballots in the side compartment were not counted because Laconia Ward 6 Moderator Felch did not understand the basic functions of the ballot collection box,” according to the Attorney General’s release on the matter.

Felch was forced to resign from his volunteer position as part of the resolution of the incident.

Laconia Joins List of NH Towns With Ballot Snafus in 2021

More stray ballots from the 2020 general election have been found during a 2021 election, this time in Laconia. And the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office is investigating.

Ballots were reportedly found in a voting machine in September, more than 10 months after the 2020 election. Deputy General Counsel Myles Matteson with Attorney General’s Office said the ballots weren’t reported to his office until this month. Matteson said Wednesday he is unsure why the city took almost three months to report them.

“We don’t have further information to share on that at this point but our investigation is ongoing,” Matteson said.

Laconia officials are not talking. City Clerk Cheryl Hebert, City Manager Scott Myers, and Mayor Andrew Hosmer all declined to respond to requests for comment from New Hampshire Journal on Wednesday.

According to the Concord Monitor, most municipalities in New Hampshire use AccuVote optical scanning systems to tabulate paper ballots. When a voter fills out a ballot, it is scanned and dropped into a secure box connected to the scanner. 

Hebert told the Monitor the city uses an option in the ballot-counting system which allows some ballots to be diverted to a special partitioned section of the box. But she would not say if the ballots discovered in September were found in the special partition. Matteson said whatever happened, it was not the machine’s fault.

“There is no indication that the ballots were left in the ballot collection box because of machine error,” he said.

Representatives for AccuVote are unavailable for comment this week due to the Christmas holiday.

Matteson said the total number of found ballots is not known at this time, but he said they would not change the outcome of any race. While the problem may not be a mechanical error, some Granite Staters in the so-called voter integrity movement want to do away with all voting machines.

The New Hampshire Voter Integrity group is an online community that includes conspiracy theorists who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election. An effort to get rid of the voting machines in Greenland recently failed overwhelmingly at the ballot box, though there are more plans in other towns to get rid of the machines.

The AccuVote optical scanners used in New Hampshire were generally manufactured in the 1990s, and do not have the ability to go onto the internet, or even be accessed by Bluetooth devices. That has not stopped conspiracy theories from speculating the vote totals were manipulated because of the machines.

The Laconia ballot error is similar to ballot mishaps in Bedford, Merrimack, and Nottingham when stray ballots were found months later.

Bedford tried and failed to keep word of its ballot mishandling secret. Last year, 190 absentee ballots in the November 2020 general election were mistakenly placed among counted ballots and weren’t found until five days later. Town election officials, at the suggestion of Assistant Town Brian Shaughnessy, kept their existence secret from town councilors and the general public — including the 190 disenfranchised voters.

Last month, Town Manager Rick Sawyer sent members of the Town Council an email informing them that another stash of counted 2020 ballots had been found in a ballot box in September during the special election. It took the town weeks to tell anyone about these ballots. Senior Assistant Attorney General Anne Edwards confirmed she’s investigating that latest ballot snafu. Edwards had all of Bedford’s ballot boxes seized as part of the investigation.

According to emails obtained by New Hampshire Journal, Town Council Chairman Dan Gilbert was upset that the news of the ballots had gone public. He told councilors not to answer questions about the ballots.

“I have asked for a meeting with our town attorney, town clerk, and town moderator to decide on a course of action in this matter. Please refrain from asking questions or making any comments until a path forward is decided on. I am very disturbed that someone already spoke to the NH Journal about this matter,” Gilbert wrote.