Oxford’s response to a Shelton man’s claim the town owes him $100,000 in connection with the auction of a Hawley Road property last year?
We don’t owe you $100,000 — you owe us $500,000.
Background
Last year the town held a tax auction for 66 Hawley Road, a 12-acre property used by SteelVault Datacenters LLC.
At the time the town said the owner of the property, a Greenwich-based company named JJT & M, Inc. (currently in bankruptcy), owed $480,000 in back taxes. Costs, fees and interest on that amount made the total the company owed to Oxford $1.2 million.
Two days before the auction, JJT & M sued the town, saying they had paid all their back taxes and had the canceled checks to prove it — but that the money was stolen by Karen Guillet, the former Oxford tax collector now serving a prison sentence for stealing money.
JJT & M’s lawsuit against Oxford is still pending.
Everybody’s Suing
Meanwhile, the auction proceeded — and that’s when Angelo Melisi of Shelton entered the picture. He was the auction’s only bidder.
Melisi offered $600,000 for the JJT & M property and gave a $100,000 deposit to a state marshal to hold as a trustee.
But, after the auction, Melisi’s lawyer got a terse letter from an attorney representing JJT & M calling the Oxford auction “nefarious and illegal” and promising to sue him if he tried to take possession of the land.
Melisi, in turn, sued Oxford, claiming officials bungled the tax auction and won’t return his $100,000 deposit.
Town Responds
The town responded in April with a filing of its own.
It denied Melisi’s allegations and accused Melisi of breaching his contract to buy the property. Oxford claims Melisi still owes the town $500,000, the agreed upon price for the land.
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Melisi v. Oxford, Town’s Response
Though title to the property has been recorded in Melisi’s name at Town Hall, his lawyer, Stephen Bellis, said Monday that JJT & M has not relinquished its claim to the property.
The Valley Indy left a message seeking comment with JJT & M’s lawyer Tuesday.
“The title’s not clear,” Bellis said. “It’s tied up the property.”
The case was the subject of a brief proceeding at Superior Court in Milford Monday, where Judge Arthur Hiller granted a request from the town to put a $350,000 lien on Melisi’s interest in the property for the next 90 days.
Outlook
Bellis said he agreed to the lien in the hope that the case could be settled at some point during that 90-day time frame.
Bellis said Monday his client would agree to deed the property back to the town in return for his $100,000 deposit back, “because it’s just too complicated.”
“He doesn’t want to pay the full price for something he can’t use,” Bellis said. “My guy didn’t do anything wrong. He had no beef with the prior owner.”
Meanwhile, the town is still fighting with JJT & M over back taxes. Town officials claim JJT & M’s bankruptcy is a ploy to avoid paying.
The Guillet Connection
JJT & M claims it paid all the taxes it had supposedly owed, but the payments were stolen by Guillet, the town’s former tax collector now serving a four-year prison sentence for embezzling nearly $250,000 of taxpayer money.
Oxford officials last month asked a judge for permission to take Guillet’s deposition to try to get to the bottom of things.
Judge Denise Markle on June 3 granted that motion, but Guillet’s lawyer, Dominick Thomas, said Tuesday (June 25) that he hadn’t heard anything about the matter and that Guillet has not been deposed in the case.
First Selectman George Temple has previously said the town handled the tax sale according to state law.
