condominium association fraud Tag Archives

February 25, 2020

Property Manager Steals Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars from Two South Florida Condominium Associations

by Roberto C. Blanch

Roberto C. Blanch

As documented in a recent report in the Miami Herald, the property manager of two Sunny Isles Beach condominium towers has been arrested for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the associations for the properties.

Property manager Georgina Pineda (pictured below) was booked into a Miami-Dade County jail recently, and apparently it wasn’t her first brush with the law involving association theft and fraud. This time, court documents allege she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Eden Roc Condos, which she had managed since 2017. The documents indicate that much of the money went to feed her gambling habit at the Miccosukee casino.

According to Sunny Isles police, Pineda had access to the condo association’s debit card. She was supposed to use it only for small expenditures for the community, but when the association board demanded a full audit she “continually made excuses as to why she was not providing accounting reports.”

The arrest report also states that when Pineda finally provided a spreadsheet, it was missing numerous transactions — including withdrawals at the Miccosukee casino in West Miami-Dade. In addition, she was regularly transferring association funds into her own independent business account.

April 18, 2016

Fight Against Condo Fraud Heightens

by Siegfried Rivera

Siegfried Rivera

An article in the Miami Herald that appeared on Saturday, April 16, reported that more than 250 South Florida condo residents teamed up to march against condo fraud last week. The protestors, who marched on the streets of Doral, demanded that authorities reform condo laws in order to prevent fraudsters from taking advantage of their communities. The protest included residents from several areas in Miami-Dade County, including Kendall, North Miami Beach and Aventura, as well as from Broward County.

Our firm has been very active in spotlighting this growing problem throughout the years in this blog and in our complimentary educational seminars for association directors, members and managers. Recently, firm partner Roberto C. Blanch authored an article that appeared in the op-ed page of the Herald calling for greater law enforcement and regulatory efforts to combat association fraud. Roberto wrote:

Florida is the state with the most community associations in the country, with more than 47,000, and it has now become imperative for the state’s lawmakers, regulators and law enforcement agencies to change their collective mindset in their approach toward combating community association fraud, theft and embezzlement.

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March 22, 2016

Roberto Blanch Authors Article in Today’s Miami Herald Op-Ed Page: “Florida Must Improve Policing of Condo Fraud”

by Siegfried Rivera

Siegfried Rivera

Firm shareholder Roberto C. Blanch wrote an article that appears in the op-ed “Opinions” page of today’s Miami Herald pegged to the ongoing investigative series by el Nuevo Herald that is being featured in the Herald. The article, which was titled “Florida Must Improve Policing of Condo Fraud,” focuses on the need for changes in the state law enforcement and government’s collective mindset towards combating condominium association fraud.

Roberto’s article reads:

An investigative report in el Nuevo Herald chronicled the growing problem of election fraud at South Florida condominium associations. Based on the episodes of possible fraud uncovered by the reporters and the growing number of complaints by local condo associations, it has become apparent that it’s time to put teeth into Florida’s laws and enforcement actions addressing this type of fraud.

The report uncovered that at least 84 signatures were forged in fraudulent ballots submitted in the annual board member election last year at The Beach Club at Fontainebleau Park condominium in northwest Miami-Dade. It also describes how the election at the Los Sueños condo in Hialeah was anything but a dream when it resulted in an unprecedented voter turnout of 115 percent after the final vote tally exceeded the total voting pool.

The boards of directors control the purse strings for the communities they govern, and many communities have annual budgets of multiple millions of dollars that are used for a variety of lucrative service contracts. As such, condo association boards make for appealing targets for fraudsters who conspire to take over their control via annual elections.

In a recent case in Las Vegas, a U.S. Justice Department investigation revealed that 11 associations were defrauded of tens of millions of dollars in a board of directors takeover scheme from 2003 to 2009. Forty-one defendants were convicted of getting their straw unit buyers elected to the associations’ boards through tactics involving forgery, bribery, ballot stuffing and dirty tricks. The conspirators were found to have rigged the associations’ elections by traveling to Mexico to print phony ballots, using the master key at a condominium complex in order to remove ballots from mailboxes, and retrieving discarded ballots from condo dumpsters.

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