OT: How to send an email anonymously ...

[joe at actionline.com]

Every day, I receive email messages sent to me from fake sender email
addresses, even spam garbage supposedly sent to me from my own email
address.  How do they do that?

While I have never done this before, I now have a need to do send an
email completely anonymously (preferably using our homeowner association
email address ;) and would like to know how this can be done safely and
not illegally.

To briefly explain, we have a neighbor who has poured the foundation to
build a structure in his back yard (without obtaining a building permit)
and if he should proceed, this non-compliant structure will cause him
even greater expense and hardship if he is not prevented from proceeding.
The size of the foundation makes it very obvious that the structure is
not in compliance with either city building codes or HOA requirements.

Needless to say, we want to avoid causing hard feelings with our
neighbor, so we would like to be able to alert the city authorities
*anonymously* in order to protect our neighbor from continuing and ending
up with very costly consequences.

Regrettably, our home owner's association has taken the position that
they will indeed take the necessary corrective actions, including
notifying the city building code department, once the building is built
and visible from the street; however, they say that they will not take
any action until the building is built and a "visible" violation has
actually been committed.  How stupid is that?

So, my question is, how can I send an email to the city building code
enforcement department to alert them of the homeowner's failure to obtain
a building permit so that the email will appear to be from our homeowner
association?

I have already spoken to them by phone, but they will not take any action
until they receive a formal "complaint" via their online input form which
requires submitting the name and contact information of whoever is filing
the complaint.  They say that such reports are best and usually filed by
HOAs and not by neighbors, to avoid needless conflicts.

Obviously, I could just wait until my neighbor has spent all the money to
build the structure and then have a prolonged legal action to force him
to tear it down, but how much better to protect him from all that
needless pain and expense?