Updated at 12:40 p.m. May 30, 2014
Merrilee Miller of Goleta has renewed her quest to expose what she call a “government fraud scam” involving her family’s former land near Lake Murray.
This week, she sent the District Attorney’s Office a 680-word letter noting her real-estate fraud complaint of November 2011 that San Diego illegally incorporated her family’s 103 acres “into a bogus city park and charging the public illegal park usage fees to access our property.”
She quoted a response from Anthony Samson, former chief of the fraud division: “After reviewing your request for investigation, we have concluded that the facts presented indicate there is no basis for further action at this time.”
But Miller says she called Samson to ask about his conclusion, and “Mr. Samson’s response was: ‘The city is simply playing games with you.’ Mr. Samson advised me to contact the San Diego Grand Jury and the San Diego City Council — which I did, to no avail.”
Her family’s efforts to reacquire the land were detailed by the San Diego Reader in June 2007 and in several La Mesa Patch stories.
“The City of San Diego maintains she cannot use the land, other than walking the public pathway around the lake or playing a round of golf on the Mission Trails Golf Course. Miller says her family owns the land where the 17th hole [at Mission Trails Golf Course] is located,” the Reader said. “The golf course now leases the land from the city.”
On Thursday, Miller’s sister — Marlene Dawson of Ferndale, Washington — told Times of San Diego that she had been contacted by a city attorney “who said that they’d like to work something out, per our title on the Murray Reservoir property.”
The contact was made Tuesday, she said.
“This party said he serves on the city auditor’s board,” Dawson said. “I forwarded him some more information and have it on my calendar to call him back [in June].”
But Friday, a spokesman for the City Attorney’s Office said no deal is in the offing.
“Our office is not ‘looking into’ this matter,” said Michael Giorgino, chief deputy city attorney for communications. “Our office litigated Ms. Dawson’s claim in 2009 and her lawsuit was dismissed by the court with prejudice.” (See court order.)
Miller’s claim to the land goes back to the late 1800s, when her great uncle, Bruce Waring (for whom Waring Road is named), “bought property in eastern San Diego, including a canyon near La Mesa,” the Reader said. “In 1887, Waring’s Junipero Land and Water Company entered into an easement agreement with the San Diego Flume Company.”
But Miller contends that the Lake Murray acreage is zoned Agricultural Residential (with one house for every 10 acres).
“In order for property to be incorporated into a city park, it must be legally rezoned to … Open Space Park,” she says in her letter dated May 24.
“There is not one shred of evidence that Lake Murray was ever legally rezoned or legally incorporated into Lake Murray Park or Mission Trails Regional Park. I repeat — it’s all smoke and mirrors.”
Tanya Sierra, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, said via email Thursday: “I can only confirm we are in receipt of the letter. I am not at liberty to divulge any other details.”
Miller alleges title fraud, fraudulent maps, fraudulent inundation data and perjury in the case as well as “charging the public illegal fees to fish, boat and golf over someone’s private property.”
She says she presented proof in 2011 in the form of a 2006 San Diego Official Zoning Map Challenge sent to the San Diego Development Services Department.
Miller says Dan Joyce, a senior planner, told her that he did not have the authority to remove her family’s property from illegal park status, “and that I’d have to speak with Lane MacKenzie at the Real Estate Asset Dept. to see if he could remove it.”
“It appears that Lane MacKenzie continues to be the ‘fall guy,’ because the representatives of the city are too embarrassed to admit the truth and too embarrassed to do anything about it,” Miller says.
Despite her failure to achieve redress, she vows to continue pressing her case “until someone looks into it and someone does something about it. So far, every agency in San Diego appears to be passing the buck and turning a blind eye, in the hopes that I’ll go away.”
She’s even written to Fox News commentator Sean Hannity with a copy to Texas Attorney Greg Abbott.