Todd Rokita Lawsuit Against Indiana Nonprofit Exposes Alleged Real Estate Deal Involving Powerful GOP Chairman

Todd Rokita, the Attorney General for the state of Indiana, is suing to dissolve a nonprofit entity in the state of Indiana. The Attorney General’s office here in the state of Indiana oversees the state’s charitable organizations. So Todd Rokita and the Attorney General’s office is in charge of making sure that charitable organizations, nonprofits abide by the laws and the rules and the regulations that nonprofits are supposed to play by. And if they aren’t, now Todd Rokita can’t criminally charge someone, we’ve laid that out before, but he can move to dissolve that entity if they’re not doing the things, the basic standards nonprofits are supposed to abide by. Then the Attorney General’s office can move to dissolve that entity. And that’s what he’s doing.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita Moves to Dissolve Troubled Nonprofit Organization

So he’s filed a suit, Rokita has, in Hamilton Superior Court Five to dissolve an organization called Third Phase, Inc. Now, Third Phase, Inc. was a homeless shelter, a food pantry founded all the way back in 1980. So it’s been around for a long time. But the complaint from Rokita’s office alleges years of mismanagement by Third Phase Inc. and this is where it starts getting interesting, a proposed below market sale of the real estate associated with the nonprofit to its own attorney, Hamilton County GOP Chairman Mario Massillamany. Are you guys following me? So what they’re basically saying is this nonprofit has been around for a while, a long time. We think it’s gone off the rails, no pun intended. We don’t think it’s really doing much of anything. We don’t really know where a lot of the money or the resources or whatever are going. We don’t know what it’s actually doing. We don’t think it’s abiding by the basic standards, reporting requirements, etc. of its nonprofit status. And now we’ve got it selling a potentially very valuable piece of real estate to the Hamilton County GOP chairman, who oh, by the way, just happens to be one of its attorneys. Are you with me? Okay, that’s where we’re at so far.

Questions Grow Over Alleged Below-Market Property Sale Linked to GOP Chairman

And again, this is very difficult to understand. I’m trying to simplify it for you as best I can. This is why this show is valuable. This could potentially be a massive deal. This has the potential, depending on where this story goes, to be a huge deal given the power that Massillamany has. He’s a super prominent attorney. He’s partners with Chris Jeter, who is a state rep, and he runs the Hamilton County Republican Party, which is one of the largest Republican parties, one of the fastest growing Republican parties in the state of Indiana. So Rokita’s filings, according to Abdul over at Indy Politics, says Third Phase, that’s the nonprofit, held no formal board meetings between 2021 and 2025. Now, for those of you who don’t know, you’re required as a nonprofit as it relates to budgets, things like that. You have to have board meetings. Nonprofits have to have a board that governs them. Now, with most nonprofits, these are unpaid people. They’re volunteers. They’re people who just help out. But there are certain things you have to do, certain reporting requirements, compliance issues to keep that status. Because obviously, the big part of a nonprofit is you don’t pay taxes. Nonprofits don’t pay taxes. Now, people who work for nonprofits, etc., they do, the money they get paid, but the nonprofit itself doesn’t pay taxes. We’ll come into that here in a second because that’s a big deal. So they said, according to Rokita’s filings, Third Phase had held no formal board meetings between 2021 and 2025, reported no employees other than the director, Sandra Van Den Berg, for at least five years and keeps no formal budget. So other than this woman apparently getting paid, it appears this nonprofit, at least on paper, isn’t doing anything. And so Rokita’s office got wind of this and said, hey, you can’t do this. You’re not doing anything that resembles a nonprofit. The basic nuts and bolts of being a nonprofit. We’re done with you. Van Den Berg’s husband and former board president Richard Vandenberg was removed in 2022 and pleaded guilty in September of 2023 to dealing methamphetamine, according to IndyPolitics.org. Now, that stuff’s all bad enough. Now, this is where it gets juicy, though. The real issue here that’s getting all the attention or starting to get the attention, is this real estate deal and the fact that at least on the surface, it appears it could be a sweetheart deal to a powerful Hamilton County attorney who also happened to be an attorney for these people and a political figure who did work with this dumpster fire of an organization. Here’s what Abdul wrote, and I’m going to read this to you exactly as Abdul wrote it, so that I don’t miss anything, or people say, well, he took that out of context or whatever. I’m going to read you this exactly as it was written in Indy Politics. Third Phase owns roughly ten acres at 15755 Allisonville Road, next to the Nickel Plate Trail, next to the Nickel Plate Trail. That could be a pretty prominent area, guys, for those of you who know Hamilton County. In late 2025, the nonprofit signed a partial purchase agreement to sell the parcel for $350,000 to MJS Holdings LLC, a single member entity formed on October 17th, 2025, with Massillamany as the sole member. So essentially, a single member LLC people. That’s him. They’re basically selling it to him through this LLC. Massillamany’s firm had been retained by Third Phase after the office of the Attorney General, the OAG, issued civil investigative demands. Massillamany said in an interview with Indy Politics that on the property transaction itself, Third Phase was independently represented by Robert Miller of Charitable Allies, a separate firm hired by the nonprofit that, according to Massillamany, commissioned the appraisal and negotiated the purchase agreement. So Massillamany’s argument is, hey, these guys, okay? Yeah, I worked with these guys and I’m buying this land or tried to buy this land from these guys, but I didn’t represent them on this sale. Like on the sale, they have their own representation on this sale. I represented them on this issue related to potentially getting the nonprofit status dissolved. I didn’t have anything to do with that. They have their own attorney. They have counsel helping them on this one. According to Abdul, the $350,000 price was based on a November 2025 appraisal by Sean Patterson of SJ Patterson Company, which cited deferred maintenance, partial floodplain encumbrance and the need for demolition. But the 2026 Hamilton County tax assessment values the property at $1,236,900. So you’ve got this one appraiser saying it’s worth $350,000. But then the assessor’s office says it’s $1,236,900. And independent appraisal commissioned from the office of the Attorney General, so that’s Rokita’s office, from American United Appraisal Company, had it come in at $1,007,000. So you’ve got this appraiser working with the group saying it’s 350 ish thousand dollars. The Hamilton County Assessor is saying it’s 1.2 million. Rokita’s office said, we don’t trust either one of you guys. We’re coming in on our own. And they said it’s over $1 million.

Conflicting Property Appraisals and Legal Claims Intensify Political Dispute

Now, Massillamany basically tried to claim, hey, the price that we agreed to was based on there needs to be about 400 to $500,000 of work on this property, including mold remediation and demolitions. He also said, and this is where we come back to them not paying taxes. Third Phase is a charitable nonprofit, is exempt from property taxes and has never challenged its assessment because the assessed value doesn’t matter. So like when you guys get your property tax assessment, a lot of you are going to challenge it because the assessment is what they tax you on. 1% is the cap on your property tax. Of course, if you have a school referendum, it’s higher, but 1% is the cap based on the taxes that you would pay, 1% of the assessed value. Here he was saying, Massillamany was saying, hey, look, this group never challenged the assessment, even though they may not agree with it, because they don’t pay any taxes on it. So it doesn’t matter to them what it’s assessed at. Now it gets even weirder, right? So you guys are following me on this, right? So let’s just kind of recap high level. This nonprofit group doesn’t appear to be doing much of anything. Rokita comes in, the attorney general says, there’s a lot of stuff going on here that kind of looked like shenanigans. We’re shutting you guys down. One of the things this group has is this pretty valuable piece of property. They then, despite not doing anything, not having these board meetings, not having a budget, so you don’t really know where the money’s going, they agree to sell this pretty valuable piece of property to a powerful Hamilton County attorney, who also happens to be the head of the Hamilton County Republican Party, for what appears to be far below market value, according to the Attorney General and the Hamilton County Assessor’s Office. Now, Massillamany claims that he was in communication with the Attorney General’s office throughout this process. He, according to Abdul, showed phone records that showed calls placed to the Attorney General’s office. Now, we don’t know what happened in those phone calls, but he showed Abdul phone records that appear to show he called the Attorney General’s office. He said he, being Massillamany, he and his paralegal spoke to the Attorney General representative for approximately ten minutes on April 17th, and he told the AG’s office, this is what he claims Massillamany, that he would not close on the deal without approval from the attorney general. So he’s saying, hey, I’m doing this. I’m giving you a heads up on it. I won’t close on this property without you guys signing off on it. That’s what he claims. And asked whether the Attorney General’s office wanted to walk through or do its own appraisal. The closing was scheduled for April 30th. The Attorney General’s office filed suit on April 24th. This is crazy, guys.

Feud Between Top Indiana Republicans Raises Stakes Ahead of Future Elections

Like Rokita’s office basically says Mario Massillamany is full of it. According to Abdul, quote, a spokesperson for Rokita previously told the Indiana Lawyer that Massillamany, quote, never told the office he would hold the purchase until it was greenlit and accused him of attempting to cover his tracks. The complaint flags in footnote two that the OAG asked for the conflict of interest waivers between Third Phase and its attorney, and that none had been produced. This is crazy. These are some of the most powerful Republicans in the state, openly feuding with each other, telling completely different stories, and both basically saying the other side is full of it. Now one more part to this. It’s like a Jason Voorhees movie. Just when you think it’s over. Oh, there’s something else. Now, we should point out, he is not named as a defendant in the Rokita lawsuit, but he characterized this, and what Rokita is doing, as being politically motivated because Massillamany back in 2024 was floated as a potential challenger to Todd Rokita for attorney general, but did not file. Quote, in Abdul’s piece, this is straight up a political vendetta, said Massillamany. And last but not least, Mario Massillamany and Todd Rokita are two of Diego Morales’ biggest supporters. You’ve got Massillamany appointing delegates to the state convention, and I haven’t seen a one yet who isn’t in Diego Morales’ corner of the appointments that he has. This is a potentially massive story. Now we’ll see what comes of it. We’ll see what comes of this Rokita lawsuit against Third Phase. We’ll see. Now the media is aware of it and has started digging what they come up with. And we’ll keep you posted throughout the entire way. And by the way, this sort of story, at least when it comes to broadcasting, you’re only going to get right here, and look, you got to have time to go into it. That’s a very involved story.