Detailed Complaint Against Steven L Mammen

Following is a detailed report about a scam artist, named Steven L Mammen, who has been falsely representing himself as a “property manager,” under the guise of a paper-only HOA management company he dubbed “Phoenix,” for Peachtree Village HOA, located in Plano, Texas.

Among other unethical, if not criminal actions, Steven Mammen has, fraudulently, set up an account in the name of Peachtree Village HOA, which is currently in place over the home community where I live, through PayHOA's Demo (30 day trial) service, and we, several of us homeowners in my community, are very worried Mammen’s goal is to funnel our HOA dues payments into an account at BankUnited (which he also set up without proper authority) in order to pocket the funds for himself and, then, disappear! Since Stripe is the company which processes any payments made to PayHOA by our homeowners who are not yet aware of this man’s criminal intent, we are hoping Stripe will prevent him from stealing money from any of our homeowners, many of the elderly and just barely getting by on social security and, maybe, some small pensions

Racist HOA Foundation

To understand how we have ended up in this terrible place, it’s helpful to know that, at least in our case here at Peachtree Village (in East Plano, Texas), the only reason we even have an HOA is because Plano was a very different place 45 years ago when a tract home building company well-known for using cheap construction materials and underpaid workers (Fox & Jacobs), proposed to develop a low cost development of 97 homes in an area that was, at that time, populated almost exclusively by white residents who became terrified at the prospect that people of color would move in, due to the lower home costs! In response, they petitioned the City of Plano and Collin County to insist this new neighborhood have an HOA and, once established, installed one, all-white Board of Directors after another who did all they could to weaponize 100s of highly subjective decoration and maintenance rules to either keep blacks out or, if they did move in, to constantly threaten, fine and harass them until they moved out! (For more information on this history of racism at Peachtree Village, please contact the director at the Plano African American Museum, 900 13th Street, Plano, TX 75074, 469-863-7226).

Tragically, this alternative to overt segregation has been effective, in that, Peachtree Village, STILL, has only 3 black homeowners, out of 97 altogether! That’s only 3%, in a state where blacks make up 12% of the population!

Today, things have improved somewhat. Most all Peachtree Village homeowners are not racists or religious bigots, but we are, unfortunately, still grappling with a small group (about 20 in all) who are desperately clinging to HOA power, hoping they can lie, deceive, obfuscate and bully homeowners to suppress all dissent, and maintain their racist agenda.

Illegal HOA Board Usurpations

But that’s not the only thing this HOA has been guilty of. About 20 years ago (2006), most of our community’s homeowners began to passively resist the HOA by “voting with their feet,” that is, by no longer participating in the HOA’s annual meetings. As a result, the HOA could not put together the minimum percentage required (30% or 29 or more distinct homeowner households) by our Founding Rules (the DCCRs, By-Laws and Articles of Incorporation) in order to hold a valid Board of Directors election! The HOA became defunct, and for quite some time, there was no Board at all, until about 7 years ago, one homeowner (Joe Tarell) took it upon himself to put together an illegitimate Board, by simply ignoring the quorum requirement before any legal election could be held! (By the way, the current “President,” Cheryl Allen, in a prepared, written, video-recorded statement, admitted all of the above facts which anyone may view at https://youtu.be/V6hDvZFWbU8.)

(According to the Texas State Property Code, the only way to revive a Board after not having one, is for 3 homeowners to register themselves, in sworn affidavits, to the local County Clerk of court, swearing to conduct a fair Board election after giving all homeowners at least a 30 notice in advance...but this has never happened!)

Ever since 2006, one “Board” after another simply pretended to have a quorum year after year and, then, with only a handful of participants, including both physically present or by proxy, chose among themselves who would be on the succeeding Board…even at their last Annual Meeting on May 12, 2025.

Intentional, False 2025 Quorum

On May 12, 2025, the previous Fake Board had been challenged by a group of homeowners in Peachtree Village who, upon learning they had, falsely usurped their Board positions illegally, had elected an Interim Board to carry on the duties of the Peachtree Village HOA until a legally elected Board in an Annual Meeting could be selected after a proper quorum was first established. However, this previous Fake Board, made up of Joe Tarell (the previous “President”), Mimi Clotfelder, Brenda Herrick, Barry Applewhite and Craig Williams, conspired with the HOA management company THEY had hired a good 5 years earlier, Goodwin & Co., which had participated directly in their illegal Board usurpations, in order to conduct an annual meeting which only gave the false appearance of Peachtree Village homeowner participation! They stacked the room at the Plano Harrington Library with 1 to 2 dozen persons who acted like they were part our community. The previous Fake Board arranged for employees of Goodwin to conduct the election, a gross violation of modern, democratic norms, in that, they were anything but independent and had every motive to keep secret what they had done in the past. Proxies were mailed out with Joe Tarrell’s name printed on them (another violation of voting norms)! They made up their own list of homeowner names and addresses that was NOT printed off directly from the Collin County Tax Record roll and, consequently, at least in one case, used the alternate list to exclude proxies from their opponents! They also failed to have 3 homeowners file affidavits with the Collin County Clerk of Court to form a legal Election Committee to oversee the Board election. Then, one of the Goodwin & Co. employees, simply got up and, without supplying any proof whatsoever, lied and claimed the 30% quorum had been met!

But several months later, one homeowner (Rick Lannoye) began to question that quorum after the new “Board” kept saying, over and over and over again, how they had won election by such a wide margin! It was so over the top, it raised the concern that, maybe, they had not really! So, in what should have been a simple process, Mr. Lannoye submitted, in writing, a certified letter, notifying the “Board” of an inspection of the sign in sheet and proxies submitted at the May 12, 2025 annual meeting…only to be completely obstructed from seeing them!

To prevent these vital HOA records from coming to light, the “Board” even went so far as to intentionally conflate rules about a ballot recount (which has a limited time frame to be made) which was NOT requested, in order to falsely claim an HOA inspection of the sign in sheet and proxies was “close to the same thing,” when in fact, they are worlds apart! Since then, the current Fake Board has continued to obstruct access to any and all HOA records, even going as far as to use OUR HOA money, to the tune of, at least, $11,000.00, to hire a lawyer who used various loopholes and stalling tactics to prevent ANY homeowner (and there have been 2 other requests since then) from seeing these vital documents. This tells us the current “Board” must not have been duly elected for the failure of that May 12, 2025 annual meeting to meet the required 30% or more quorum in order to conduct a legally-binding election! Had they been able to, they would have happily allowed inspection of the documents! But clearly, they are obstructing access to them because, this means every dollar they have spent in the name of our HOA was misappropriated, in that, they never had any authority to collect, much less spend, our HOA money!

No Real HOA Management Company Wanted to Contract with Peachtree Village HOA

But the truth about their lies and deceit didn’t fool everyone. The HOA Management company they hired, Proper HOA Management, though they made no public statement about it, almost immediately decided to terminate their contract with the current “Board,” shortly after the news about the fake quorum back on May 12, 2025 was publicized in November, 2025, by the group of homeowners known as the Peachtree Village Neighborhood Union, and communicated the news about the faked quorum and, therefore, illegitimate election that followed, directly to their President, Kyle Kerley.

The word soon spread to most every other HOA management company in North Texas and beyond and, as a result, they all refused to do business with the fake HOA Board at Peachtree Village. Then, in desperation, there was one guy who told the current “President,” he was the one to help them out of the mess they were in—Steven L Mammen!

Mammen Becomes Cheryl Allen’s “Rock Star” Savior

It was during the summer of 2025 when Proper HOA Management appointed their (then) employee, Steven Mammen, to become the “community manager” for Peachtree Village HOA. At the July 2025 open, Board meeting (this was before they stopped conducting open meetings), Cheryl Allen announced, in the most glowing way, how impressed she was with Steven Mammen, so much so, she repeated kept calling him a “rock star”! However, in the meantime, Proper HOA had discovered enough evidence, not the least of which was his violation of their non-compete agreement, to fire him! In time, we learned Mammen was using his position as an HOA community manager to begin negotiate behind the back of his employer to lure the away to become his own clients, but not for any real company.

In October of 2025, Mammen lied on an application he submitted to the Texas Secretary of State that he had a new company called “Phoenix HOA Management,” supplying the address of the house where he was renting either a room or more as this “corporate office.” We don’t know how much Mammen and Cheryl Allen were in contact from September 2025 to January of 2026, but at some point the two met and conspired to put together their own, fake, version of a new HOA management company.

By mid January, 2026, “President” Allen suddenly announced the “Board” had found a new HOA management company to replace Proper, but once we (the Neighborhood Union and others, even 2 of the persons who were part of the current “Board”) immediately suspected foul play when it was learned it was the same Steven Mammen, who had been fired by Proper just a few months earlier, who, all of the sudden, supposedly had his own “company,” replete with a “field office” 4 “employees” and 4 other HOA “clients.”

He began by telling everyone in our community to send their HOA dues to his “company’s field office,” located at 16475 Dallas Pkwy, Ste 200, Addison, TX 75001. But already suspicious this guy was up to no good I, personally, went to this building, only to discover office 200 was completely empty! To find out more of what was going on, I then approached the building’s owner and head manager, John West, who informed that Mammen had dropped by and inquired about an office, but never did return with any deposit or completed lease application. Then Mr. West conducted his own investigation into Mammen and, while he didn’t specify what all he had discovered, it was enough to state, to me personally, “Mr. Mammen had not only never had an office here, but he’ll never get one in the future!”

What then to make of Mammen’s intention? Soon, it became clear. We learned he had submitted a forwarding address request to the US Post Office, in which, he directed all mail (like the ones containing HOA dues payments) to PO Box 51, 1251 William D Tate Ave., Grapevine, TX 76051, which is, as we also found out later, a very serious Federal offense! Upon confronting the current Fake Board about this deception, Mammen quickly closed PO Box 51, and after a brief, rather pitiful attempt to change his story, claiming he was “going to” have an office in Addison, we never heard any more about his having any sort of office until Mammen’s letter of March 21, 2026, in which he now claims to be in charge of the “Peachtree Village Processing Center,” located in New Braunfels, Texas, a good 240 miles south of our community, located in Plano, Texas! To be clear, Peachtree Village has NEVER had any sort of “Processing Center,” and even if we did, the last thing we’d ever do is set one up in a small town half the way to the Mexican boarder!

The last time any of us regular homeowners saw Mammen in person was the last, open, Peachtree village HOA “Board” meeting held on January 21, 2026. In that meeting, Mammen falsely claimed to have a bond and promised to let us inspect it, only to never show us a thing. It was in that same meeting, Mammen falsely claimed to have other HOA “clients” which, in context, was supposed to be other, actual, homeowner communities with an HOA, only he refused to tell us who they were. However, we learned (from Kyle Kerley, Proper’s president) he has NONE! It was there he also falsely claimed to have “employees,” but when confronted with the fact he has no office, he then said, “Oh, they’re all working from home!” It took a bit, but it soon became clear he was merely equivocating, because his HOA “clients” and “employees” were the same as the 4 persons now falsely claiming to be on our “Board”!

It was also in mid January when Mammen had attempted to set up one or two bank accounts with Harmony Bank, either in the name of Peachtree Village HOA and/or Mammen’s paper-only “Phoenix HOA Management.” Fortunately, Harmony Bank had the good sense to run a background check on Mammen and quickly decided to close all accounts with them! We didn’t know what was going on at the time, while the Fake Board kept claiming, falsely, that a new bank account was in the process of being set up. I finally went to their branch in early February to ask them what was going on and, after a very nice conversation with them, asking why there is no account with them, the manager on duty said that maybe Mr. Mammen would be willing to explain! Later, though, in yet another effort to cover up Harmony Bank’s decision not to do business with Mammen or our HOA, they simply made up a story, falsely claiming I had “made a scene” at Harmony Bank and THAT was their reason for terminating all business with them…though a simply look at the dates would show I had only gone to the Harmony Bank branch 3 WEEKS AFTER they had already made their decision to close all the accounts Mr. Mammen had opened by giving them false information!

In the following weeks, we did some more research and discovered Mammen has a very ugly past. On Yelp, for example, we discovered he had brought numerous HOA communities in California to near ruin, raising dues payments unnecessarily, hiring friends to do shoddy work on HOA buildings, attempted to place his own picks on an HOA Board, and so on. An Intelius background checked, revealed Mammen’s constant moving from one place to the next and constantly changing his phone number. After he came to Texas some 6 years ago, he worked for at least 3 different HOA management companies, but not for long! A manager for Essex HOA Management told us they fired him after only 3 months, once they learned what a “fraud” he was.

We’ve yet to get hold of Mammen’s criminal record from California, when he had a company called “Phoenix Management Consultants,” because they have very strict privacy laws, preventing the ordinary lay person to get hold of them. However, it appears Bond issuing agencies are able to get hold of criminal records, and this would explain why Mammen could not get a bond even if he wanted to!

Mammen Exploits a Flaw in PayHOA’s 30 Day Demo Trial

Then, on March 19, 2026, in spite of our many pleas to Cheryl Allen and the other 3 Fake Board members (Joe Beets, Mimi Clotfelder and Brenda Herrick) to stop having anything to do with Steven Mammen, he published a letter to the homeowners of our community, falsely stating, the HOA had a contract with PayHOA as “payment portal,” so they can begin making their month dues payments when, in reality, he had only, somehow, convinced PayHOA to set up a 30 day, Demo trial!

It took a while to get hold of a live person at PayHOA, but when we did, it became clear Mammen had lied about having a paid contract with PayHOA, which seemed so baffling at first, because their portal was not only accepting accounts from our homeowners, but was also taking their personal credit/debit card and private checking account information!!! Of course, we immediately became very worried Mammen was not only going to see how much of our regular monthly dues payments he could intercept, but also if he might get this financial information as well. After finally getting hold of PayHOA’s COO, we felt a little better, in that, he assured us Stripe would never allow Mammen, even though he is an “admin,” to get hold of this financial payment info. However, we could not believe PayHOA is either unwilling or, perhaps, unable, to suspend their 30 day trial version of their portal!

We are somewhat relieved that, just like Harmony Bank, BankUnited has also put a restriction on however much money is in the 1 or 2 accounts Mammen set up with them, so he cannot, at least not yet, withdraw any more funds than he already has, but wherever he is, (we suspect he is now in or somewhere near New Braunfels, Texas where he set up yet another (the 4th one since January, 2026) PO Box where, in his letter of March 21, 2026, he made this very odd statement:

"For those members whom wish to make physical payments instead of on-line, you may do so at the following address for processing

Peachtree Village HOA

Attn: Processing Center

P.O. Box 310003

New Braunfels, TX 78131"

This leads us to wonder if Mammen, already fully aware we’ve been on his trail, as well as having already submitted two written complaints about him to the US Post Office Inspection Service, he is secretly holed up somewhere in or near New Braunfels, hoping to get as much of our money, if not through Stripe, then at least by collecting as many checks, money orders or, God forbid, cash payments, as he can, before he disappears never to be seen again!

Without a bond, the likelihood of recovering our money is pretty much impossible, even if he were to, eventually, be tracked down and arrested by the USPS police. He’s demonstrated quite the ability to always stay one step ahead of the Law, so we cannot just sit back and hope for the best.

We’re doing all we can right now to either dissolve our HOA or, if that’s not possible, to at least find some way to prevent the persons who are currently pretending to be our Board to either quit or, if we can somehow manage to hold a fair and legal election, put in some honest and non-racist people. In the meantime, we’re asking everyone and anyone to provide any information you may have or reasonably suspect Mammen is holed up and forward any other evidence you may have about his illicit, if not criminal, activities to info@peachtreevillageplano.com