A sixth human being was arrested in link to an alleged substantial fraud at the Hammocks, marking the most current fallout in the circumstance from ex-leaders of the owners affiliation and their loved ones associates.
The Miami-Dade Condition Attorney’s Workplace claims that Kevin Leonardo Alzate was associated in the scheme by contributing to the HOA’s delays and refusals to transform more than documents subpoenaed by investigators, in accordance to an affidavit in aid of the arrest warrant.
Police arrested Alzate on Friday on charges of perjury by contradictory statements, fabricating bodily evidence and resisting an officer without having violence. His general public defenders declined remark.
Alzate, 32, is a cousin of previous Hammocks board President Marglli Gallego, who is amongst the five arrested in November of last year. In a state attorney’s business affidavit issued at the time, investigators allege some previous board members hired bogus contractors that did very little to no do the job on the house and permitted bill payments, diverting some of the cash, which include to Gallego. Aside from Gallego, ex-board members Myriam Rodgers, Monica Ghilardi and Yoleidis Lopez Garcia, as properly as Gallego’s husband, Jose Antonio Gonzalez, were also arrested. Gonzalez led some of the corporations hired by the HOA, investigators declare. All five have pleaded not responsible and are awaiting trial.
In earlier statements, Gonzalez’s legal professional denied the allegations and known as the promises from Gonzalez “misplaced”.
The Hammocks is composed of 40 communities and 6,527 residential models, like condominium buildings, solitary-household residences and townhouses. It’s about involving Southwest 120th and 88th streets and between Southwest 147th and 162nd avenues.
The Hammocks circumstance unraveled right after a around 5-year investigation, with a lot of of the delays induced by former HOA leaders’ dogged battle against information subpoenas, allegedly together with with Alzate’s help, the point out attorney’s office environment statements in courtroom filings. Authorities subpoenaed the Hammocks for documents in 2018, 2020 and 2021, in accordance to investigators.
In response to the information requests, the HOA supplied notarized affidavits with sworn statements by Alzate. In a 2020 notarized affidavit, Alzate swore that the HOA furnished 12,500 webpages to the Miami-Dade Law enforcement Section for the 2018 subpoena and cited a price tag of $6,297 for these documents. In a follow-up affidavit, Alzate “swore less than oath in advance of a notary that he is the custodian of information for the Hammocks,” the point out attorney’s place of work states in courtroom filings.
In subsequent several years, the HOA ongoing to struggle judges’ orders to deliver documents, some of which had been upheld by an appeals courtroom. In July, when Alzate was termed to testify in courtroom, he furnished data that contradicted earlier files provided by the HOA representing him as the documents custodian. When he was offered with his signed affidavits determining him as the custodian, Alzate advised the court docket “he may possibly not have browse the complete document … and that he did not writer the affidavit,” the state attorney’s workplace says. Alzate also claimed in courtroom that he was questioned to sign the affidavits by a board member, although he did not recognize which a single.
“He mentioned that he had never ever managed requests for HOA files,” Emiliano Tamayo, who heads the Hammocks investigation for the condition attorney’s place of work, wrote in Alzate’s arrest affidavit.
When authorities at first went to provide Alzate with papers for his July court hearing, entire body cameras worn by investigators confirmed him refusing to acknowledge support, filming investigators and creating telephone calls. At a single point, he refused to take the court docket service paper handed to him, “letting it drop to the ground as a substitute of taking it,” his arrest affidavit suggests.
In a push convention on Friday, Miami-Dade Condition Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle claimed that offering conflicting information and facts about his duties at the Hammocks is “insulting to the court docket, and that is insulting to the judicial approach,” NBC 6 South Florida described.
“Every working day that he was facilitating us not acquiring those information, the thievery was continuing,” Fernandez Rundle claimed, the Television station noted.
