Bank owned on Pecksland

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131 Pecksland Road has been returned to the market under different ownership and is now offered at $6.7 million, a considerable discount from the $10.750 - $8.495 it sought in 2022-2024, as the feds and the lenders closed in; a good foreclosure will do that.

The former owner, Samuel Klein, should be out of prison by now, but the house he purchased for $6.350 million in 1997 is no longer available to his use as a halfway house. You, however, can move in just as soon as you wish — it’s empty.

We’ve featured this house here at FWIW before, including:

March 14, 2022: Seize the Day;

October 19, 2023: Well, since he won't be using the place in the immediate future, a price cut makes sense;

and again on

October 28, 2023: Irony: Convicted felon's Pecksland Road home was used as a set for a Michael Douglas film about a man who couldn't sell his house

The Hartford Courant published a brief history of Mr. Klein’s business career at the time of his sentencing

May 3rd, 2022: Connecticut real estate developer sent to prison for swindling investors

A Greenwich real estate developer whose business went bust in a market downturn and who was accused later of swindling $1.5 million from friends and associates, was sentenced in federal court Tuesday to three years in prison.

Samuel Klein, 66, lived in a multi-million dollar mansion in the Greenwich back country and collected sums ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and associates on promises that he could make substantial and in some cases guaranteed profit on real estate deals.

Instead of investing the money as he promised, federal prosecutors said Klein spent much of it on his family and himself. Among other things, prosecutors produced records in court showing that Klein spent $194,000 on five brief, days-long getaways to the Amangani Resort in Jackson, Wyoming, and another $60,000 on chartered air travel.

Klein previously pleaded guilty to one count of interstate transportation of property taken by fraud and one count of money laundering.

Federal prosecutors said Klein stole to subsidize a lifestyle he could not longer afford.

“Klein prioritized his own lavish lifestyle which included accommodations at an exclusive resort and staggering credit card expenditures,” prosecutors said in a court filing. “He spent far beyond his means, and funded some of his extravagance with victim investors’ funds, which he plowed through at an aggressive clip.”

Klein’s attorneys said that at an earlier point in his life, he “thrived in the competitive and cut-throat world of real estate development in New York City. They said he built two companies, Fairchild Properties and Fairchild Realty Group, into multi-million dollar enterprises that at one time employed 3,200 people.

Among Klein’s developments were Payton Lane Nursing Home in Southampton, N.Y., New York Treetops at Mohegan Lake in Mohegan Lake, N.Y., Chandler Care Center in Ossining, N.Y.; Oakwood Care Center in Oakdale, N.Y.; Kensington Green of Southbury in Southbury; the Southbury Hilton in Southbury; the Danbury Hilton in Danbury; the Westport Inn in Westport; and the Sofitel Philadelphia at Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, Penn.

“Like so many others in the real estate industry, Mr. Klein’s business was crippled by the 2008 financial crisis,” his lawyers said in a court filing.

Klein, who had been free on bond, was taken into custody at the conclusion of Tuesday’s court proceeding.

Who can recommend a good housepainter for here in Greenwich, now that the Fountain Boyz have retired?

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A friend has asked, and the one I worked for in high school is long gone, but having learned the skill, I could rarely bring myself to pay someone to do work I could do as well, probably better, myself. I once did employ a team from somewhere near the foot of the Whitestone Bridge — probably all illegals back then, but cheap —and they did an adequate job on the exterior, and spared me the indignity of falling off a 30’ ladder, but I don’t know where they are after all these years; probably all the proud grandparents of freshly-minted American citizens who have better things to do or can make more on welfare.

So, readers, suggestions? I’ll point out that if a painting or building contractor wanted to run a $49 ad on this site, he’d certainly enjoy multifold returns in new business - Just sayin’. (Or if you’re not in the trades, you can always just hit the new improved red-button donation spot on the right)

Hope she enjoys her nice and ICEy Turkish Bath

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For her next trick, she’ll be opening a home care/hospice/autism center

An Illinois woman who claimed she was detained by ICE for nearly two days was actually relaxing at a hotel getting spa treatments, according to a $1 million defamation suit filed by a county sheriff. 

US citizen Sundas “Sunny” Naqvi, 28, gained national attention last month when she and a band of supporters – including Cook County, Ill., Commissioner Kevin Morrison — publicly insisted she was unlawfully detained by ICE officers for roughly 43 hours. 

Naqvi claimed that after landing back in the US from a work trip to Turkey on the morning of March 5, she was detained for nearly 30 hours at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, then transferred to another ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., before winding up at Dodge County Jail in Wisconsin. 

Morrison, who called the Chicago-area native his “best friend’s sister,” shared questionable screenshots of Naqvi’s location at the Juneau, Wisc., jail on Facebook — and decried the alleged incident during a tense media conference alongside Naqvi’s sister March 8. 

“This is a 28-year-old girl just left on the street by ICE in another state, without her property,” the commissioner said. 

He claimed Naqvi was released from custody in the early hours of March 7, then hitchhiked nine miles to a hotel, where she was met by family. 

The Department of Homeland Security called the claims “blatantly false” — and even posted surveillance footage from the airport showing Naqvi entering a secondary inspection zone that morning and leaving around an hour later. 

“Ms. Naqvi departed CBP within 90 minutes of her arrival to the United States…[she] was not taken into custody or transferred to ICE for detention,” DHS wrote in a March 10 X statement. 

The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office also said it had no record of Naqvi ever “being booked, detained, or released” at the local jail. 

But Morrison, who is running for a seat in Congress, doubled down — even accusing the officials of “lying” and “trying to create a cover-up,” according to the Wisconsin outlet WISN 12 News. 

Now Naqvi and Morrison are the subjects of a federal defamation lawsuit filed by Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt on Friday — as his office released new details of Naqvi’s actual actions during the alleged hoax period. 

“She checked into the Hampton Inn and Suites in Rosemont, Ill., for the entire duration of this alleged event,” Schmidt said during a press conference, where he presented a hotel bill and text receipts to illustrate Naqvi’s time there.  

The folio shows Naqvi checked in at the Hampton Inn — just a 10-minute drive from the airport — at 1:17 p.m. March 5, while text messages with an unidentified witness over the following days show she enjoyed free food, spa services and trips to the gym. 

“May I use ur card to order some food” and “going to check out the gym in like 5,” read texts from Naqvi to the witness, according to authorities.

“May i use your card to pay my spa lady?” another says in screenshots released by the sheriff’s office. 

The witness told cops he also drove Naqvi to a nearby gas station in the early hours of March 7. 

Surveillance footage taken from that outing revealed Naqvi brazenly wearing the same clothes that she’s later seen sporting in a “reunited” picture uploaded to Facebook just hours later, according to the sheriff’s office. 

The accused liar checked out of the hotel on the afternoon of March 8, the folio shows. 

Though Wisconsin authorities were not able to bring criminal charges in this case, Schmidt is seeking justice through the lawsuit, officials said.

Schmidt is requesting a jury trial and seeking damages no less than $1 million per defendant — including 10 “John Does” — who he said caused “reputational harm…particularly as he prepares for a re-election campaign in 2026.” 

Paradise Lost

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leaving galt’s gulch

Back in the early-mid 70s I spent quite a bit of time in Colorado, and was struck by the energy of the people my age who I met there: they all not only had jobs, but all seemed to have plans for starting businesses and striking out on their own. My plans to return there to live got sidetracked by life, but family members have moved there and I’ve been back myself many times.

So I’ve followed the state’s fortunes over the past 50 years, and observed its slow, sad decline. Now-former Coloradoan Stephen Green has witnessed the same deterioration and writes about it today in PJ Media:

Another Red State, Fully Californicated

"20 years ago Colorado was a Red state and thriving," the State Leadership Initiative posted late last week. "10 years ago liberals were writing pieces about how Colorado was the next Silicon Valley." And now CBS News reports that "Colorado is losing businesses and jobs at an alarming rate."

This was the hope, according to Denver-based 5280 magazine in 2020: "With another tech company setting up an office in Denver, the state could become a magnet for Silicon Valley firms and other prestigious businesses during the worst economic climate in nearly a century."

Instead of Silicon Mountain, Colorado is quickly becoming "an economic backwater," as SLI put it, "an omen for what happens when Red states go blue."

…. "The Colorado Chamber of Commerce has been sounding an alarm for years about excessive regulation," CBS reported, and "the Chamber also said that companies are also relocating out-of-state." According to the story, "since 2019, 98 companies have either left the state, expanded elsewhere, or scrapped plans to move here." In the last four years, we've lost a total of 34 corporate headquarters, too. 

The most recent big name to leave is Palantir, the AI firm recently touted by President Donald Trump for its invaluable contributions to Operation Epic Fury. With basically zero fanfare, the company announced last week that it's moved its HQ to Miami. 

"We are going to be hurting Colordans not just now, but the next generation, the next generation after that. And we just want to course correct," tech entrepreneur and investor Dan Caruso wrote to Democrat Gov. Jared Polis in a letter signed by more than 200 business and civic leaders.

Polis and the Democrat-dominated statehouse made some polite noises about maybe looking into something resembling deregulation someday soonish, but Colorado requires so much more.

Let's go back to something I wrote almost exactly one year ago, when we looked at what Colorado was like before and after 2018, the year Democrats took full control of the state government.

Previously, Colorado was:

  • Third in the nation for personal income growth.

  • A regulatory burden in the lower half of all states.

  • Tied for second-lowest unemployment in 2017 at 2.7% — and that wasn’t unusual.

  • Job growth of 2.4% in 2017 — typical for a state that was regularly in the top ten.

  • A top-10 destination for people moving in from other states.

And this is my state on Democrats, all taken from the 2024 report card published in early '25 by the Denver Gazette:

  • 39th in the nation for personal income growth.

  • Sixth-worst regulatory burden in the nation.

  • In March, we had the second-highest unemployment rate (not an atypical month).

  • Job-growth rate of 0.17% (March 2024-March 2025), 43rd in the nation.

  • A bottom-10 destination for people moving in from other states.

2025 was largely more of the same. 

Polis leaves office in January of next year, likely to be replaced by either Sen. Michael Bennet or Attorney General Phil Weiser. They're both Democrats, and both promise more of the same policies that have already turned the promise of Silicon Mountain into the sad reality of a failing blue state.