By Al Calloway
Neither the Elks national leadership nor HIF IV, the deep pocket lender, expected local Elks Lodge #652 to request a jury trial and win a jury verdict on March 17,2025 of fraud against Sator Investments, LLC, and conspiracy to commit fraud by Kevin Eutsey and Sator Investments, LLC. The decision also quieted the deed title which returned the entire property located at 712 NW 2nd Street in Fort Lauderdale back to Elks Lodge #652.
The Elks Lodge is sitting on prime, highly gentrified real estate at the edge of burgeoning downtown Fort Lauderdale and is valued in the $5 to ten million range in equity. Rumblings abound that members of this historic lodge are sounding the alarm about an alleged multi-million-dollar corporate asset grab of Elks Lodge #652 property, orchestrated by their own national leadership, led by Grand Exalted Ruler, Leonard J. Polk, Jr. Esq., and HIF IV, the lender that backed Kevin Eutsey.
In May 2025, Broward Circuit Court Judge David A. Haimes entered a final judgement officially quieting title back to the local lodge, successfully concluding a grueling multi-year legal battle against rogue lodge members, and private lender HIF IV who illegally recorded a fraudulent warranty deed in 2018. Local Elks members make no secret about how the national Grand Lodge remained silent regarding involvement in filing the March 2018 lawsuit against rouge lodge members and Eutsey’s Sator Investments, LLC. These displaced lodge members and golf friends of Kevin Eutsey illegally cut a deal for Eutsey’s entity to pay off the lodge’s unmanageable debt, with Eutsey getting the deed for the Elks property on an alleged joint venture agreement. Eutsey would turn property into a “state of the art” club with an area for Elks activities.
In addition, it is locally acknowledged that the national Grand Lodge did little to aid the local lodge community during the years the title was clouded. The Grand Lodge aggressively materialized once the millions in equity appeared and created a settlement agreement with HIF IV Lenders to liquidate local lodge property for equity skimming of loan payoff, of which the local lodge was never a borrower! Willie Ford, Exalted Ruler of Elks Lodge #652 said, “I am all in with getting the property back, reconditioning it,” he continued, “and making it a continuing viable part of the Fort Lauderdale community.”
As thousands of Elks from all over America and the Caribbean prepare to convene in Baltimore for a weeklong convention starting August 10th, local Elks are aware that Grand Exalted Ruler, Leonard J. Polk, Jr., has launched a series of hostile and retaliatory maneuvers to bypass the local organization. In a closed-door move, national leadership summarily ousted the Joint Management Team (JMT) of Elks Lodge #652 without local lodge consent or constitutional due process. Although local members pleaded “don’t quote me,” before the coming convention, there is widespread agreement that the unconstitutional coup was executed purely because the JMT refused to consent to an unauthorized backroom liquidation deal, cooked up between Elks national lawyers and predatory lenders.
“When our property was targeted by fraudsters, the national office abandoned us,” said Dr. Nadine Hankerson, JMT representative for the local lodge membership. “Now that the local brothers and daughters won the property back and gentrification has made it worth millions, our national leaders are acting exactly like the predatory lenders we just defeated in court,” she added. “They threw out the Joint Management Team/Elks Lodge Project, our elected and appointed local members, to push through illegal liquidation. This is institutional piracy, plain and simple
Elks Lodge #652 has issued a formal reply to a Cease-and-Desist demand from the Grand Lodge and is filing for an Emergency Temporary Injunction in the Broward County Circuit Court to halt the liquidation, protect their historic charter, and reinstate the rightful Joint Management Team. Local lodge members say they are calling on all regional civic leaders, historical preservation societies, and the wider community to stand with them against what Hankerson calls “predatory displacement.” Elks Lodge #652 is a historic cultural asset in Broward County for over 70 years and 99 years as an organization