Hey, here's a surprise (I jest)

Administrative Law Judge Emily Daneker found that violations by Westminster Management and the company JK2 were “widespread and numerous.”

[...]

The wide-ranging case dealt with issues from maintenance problems such as mold and rodents, to fees charged to the consumers.

Daneker found Westminster charged illegal fees thousands of times.

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Maryland law only allows landlords to charge up to $25 to process an application. But the properties in the case charged between $35 to $50 to at least 15,289 consumers, according to Daneker’s decision.

Westminster and JK2 also charged tenants $12 “agent fees” related to court filings, for costs the companies had not actually incurred. The companies did this more than 28,000 times, with the wrongly charged agent fees totaling more than $332,000, the judge wrote.

In addition, the companies charged tenants at Dutch Village and Pleasantview in Baltimore $80 “as a pass-through fee for court costs, even though the amount incurred was only $50.”

“This occurred a total of 2,642 times over the course of more than two years,” Daneker wrote.

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Kushner — the son-in-law of former president Donald J. Trump — and his brother Joshua each held 50% interest in JK2, according to the legal filing. Westminster is the successor to that company.

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The judge found that tenants were misled frequently about the conditions of the apartments before they moved in. Often, they were only shown model units and weren’t allowed to see their actual apartment until move-in day.

One man described his experience at the Charlesmont apartments in Dundalk in 2014. He was shown a unit that looked like it had just been remodeled, but the unit he got “had dirty carpet and smelled like a litter box.” His kitchen ceiling collapsed the night he moved in. Management never made repairs despite repeated complaints, so the man bought supplies at Home Depot and fixed the ceiling himself. His employer paid for the carpet to be cleaned.

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While finding many violations of consumer protection laws, Daneker did not agree with all of the allegations of the attorney general’s office’s Consumer Protection Division.

She found the division did not establish that the companies violated the law by misrepresenting their ability to provide maintenance services. She also said they were not committing some violations during the entire period alleged by the division.

The Kushner Cos. characterized the decision as vindicating Westminster, which it owns.

  Baltimore Sun

Totally exonerated. Always claim a win.

Westminster has repeatedly alleged that [the] case was politically motivated.

In her ruling, Daneker found no evidence of that.

“The evidence does not establish differential treatment or selective enforcement based on any politically motivated basis, as opposed to motivation to protect Maryland consumers,” she wrote.