Commission revokes broker’s license

The North Carolina Real Estate Commission has permanently revoked the real estate license of a Charlotte broker after he did not respond to multiple charges of improperly using clients’ earnest money and security deposits.

The commission received several complaints regarding Emmanuel Lamar Choice, who was licensed in 2009 and worked as broker-in-charge at Urban Equity Advisors in Charlotte. The charges pertain to brokerage services he provided in 2014 and 2015.

According to the commission, client Javed Kashmary signed an offer to purchase a property on Wilkinson Boulevard and delivered $5,000 in earnest money to Urban Equity Advisors. Kashmary told the commission that he never received an executed offer of purchase and contract from the purported seller, and subsequently withdrew his offer and requested that Urban Equity Advisors return his funds.

The commission said the seller, Andrea Evans, was unaware that Choice had listed her property and never received Kashmary’s offer.

Kashmary filed a complaint with the commission, which launched an investigation that found Choice had deposited the funds into a personal account from which he made ATM withdrawals and financed purchases at Trader Joe’s and Starbucks and travel-related expenditures in Los Angeles.

In another instance, Choice allegedly failed to release the full amount of a $5,000 earnest-money deposit to Leffers Associates, the seller of a terminated $1.65 million property transaction on Albemarle Road.

And in a separate case from early this year, several individuals filed complaints with the commission that alleged Choice and Urban Equity Advisors, acting as a property manager, had not remitted rent, security deposits and homeowner’s association dues. Those funds were found to have also gone into Choice’s personal accounts, the commission says.

Neither Choice nor the complainants could be reached for comment.

The commission found Choice guilty of charges that include making false promises to clients and parties to transactions to induce them to provide funds; listing properties without authority; failing to deposit and maintain money in his fiduciary capacity in a trust account and converting such funds to his own use; and failure to provide written responses to letters of inquiry received from a commission representative.

Choice’s LinkedIn account says Urban Equity Advisors is a “commercial real estate transaction firm specializing in helping entrepreneurs and investors realize their return potential by successfully negotiating balance sheet friendly CRE deal structures.”

The commission cancelled UEA’s real estate firm license in March.