Tony Cisco was facing hundreds of dollars in extra HOA fees. After KENS 5 started asking questions, it turned out to be a banking issue.
SAN ANTONIO — Tony Cisco has lived in Bristow Bend for 19 years. A disabled Army veteran, Cisco said he had logged more than 60 paradrop jumps before retiring. He likes living in the Bristow Bend community, and had not had any issues with his HOA before.
Little did the veteran know, a bizarre banking mistake would end up costing him hundreds of dollars in extra HOA fees. He couldn’t get anyone to investigate until KENS 5 got involved.
Cisco first found out something was wrong in January of this year.
“They sent me a letter that said I was behind on a payment or something,” Cisco said.
The veteran had recently switched banks and set up automatic payments from a new account, so he made sure everything was set up correctly. He then paid everything he owed for February and got a statement saying he no longer had a balance.
But the issue didn’t go away. Despite making successful payments, he was also getting hit with returned check fees and late fees on the account every month. Cisco started calling his HOA management company, RealManage, repeatedly to try and find out what was going on.
The veteran said the company wouldn’t call him back. A manager at RealManage did email him and state, “We can’t control how your account is setup, however, you can setup a new payment method…” but the new bank’s payments were the problem.
The veteran knew something else was going on, but he couldn’t get RealManage to look into it. Finally, in June, he called KENS 5.
“I’ve run into a road block as far as what to do here,” Cisco said. “I’ve asked that manager to call me and he sends me an email instead.”
KENS 5 met with Cisco and reviewed his HOA statements and banking statements multiple times. While it was clear that Cisco was paying dues every month from his current bank account, it looked like the HOA was also attempting to collect payments from a second bank account every month. When the HOA system was unable to access the money from the second bank account, it charged Cisco “returned payment charges.”
KENS 5 contacted RealManage multiple times to ask why this was happening. The company’s local office would not return our calls or emails. When KENS 5 went to the office in person, the manager refused to speak to us and a receptionist told us to leave.
KENS 5 then started contacting the RealManage corporate office and eventually called the company’s attorney on her cell phone.
Following that call, the RealManage corporate office did a full review of the issue.
Cisco then got a longer explanation. The company said they were getting payments from Cisco’s current bank. However, RealManage also said they were getting checks from another bank at the same time. That bank was Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union (RBFCU). RealManage said the checks were coming from a closed or frozen account, and couldn’t be cashed, which is why the fees were happening. They said Cisco would need to ask the bank for an explanation.
This didn’t make a lot of sense to the veteran. Cisco’s RBFCU checking account had already been closed since 2024. Additionally, the veteran said he had already gone to RBFCU in person and employees couldn’t find an issue.
Regardless, KENS 5 then reached out to RBFCU and asked them to respond to the claims made by the management company. As it turns out, those were accurate after all.
A few days later, Cisco got an unexpected call from RBFCU and the bank had, in fact, been sending out checks from an already closed account for nearly a year.
“I was mad! I had been there several times and they told me the account was closed and checks weren’t going to be sent,” Cisco said. “I couldn’t believe it! How can you be sending out bad checks!”
RBFCU later gave Cisco a letter which claimed this happened because he didn’t cancel automatic payments on the closed account. Cisco said the bank closed the account so they should have stopped the payments. Still, RBFCU also reimbursed Cisco hundreds of dollars for all the returned check fees, late fees and legal fees the issue had caused.
Cisco is still trying to sort out the balance on the HOA account, but he’s glad he won’t be on the hook for those hundreds of dollars after all.
“If it wasn’t for KENS 5 I would still be dealing with this problem,” Cisco said. “And it’s been a very long road to say the least.”
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