MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Miami-Dade prosecutors announced another arrest Friday in an ongoing investigation into one of Florida’s largest homeowners associations.
Jesus Cue, a 63-year-old accountant, is the latest to face charges in the Hammocks Community Association fraud scandal. He joins several others in facing criminal counts in the case; the most recent arrest came in late October.
Cue and his company, Worldwide Business Solution Corporation, served as a “business and accounting consultant” to the Hammocks HOA board from Oct. 31, 2018 to Nov. 4, 2022, prosecutors said.
Authorities allege he raked in $644,000 in vendor payments over those 47 months.
During the same period of time, Cue testified in bankruptcy court “that the Hammocks HOA had no reserve funds and needed to take a $375,000 short-term loan in order to maintain normal operating functions,” prosecutors said.
Former full-time employees of the HOA “provided information leading to the discovery that several board members had relatives who owned fictional companies whose alleged purpose was to funnel monies from the HOA to friends and relatives under the guise of vendor payments,” three of which had Cue’s Worldwide Business Solution Corporation as a registered agent, they said.
A witness told prosecutors that former HOA President Marglli Gallego directed former board member Monica Ghilardi ― both also charged in the case ― to “provide a hidden salary to Ghilardi” by creating a fictional firm called Albri Consulting, LLC.
Authorities said that the firm had the witness listed as the firm’s manager — without the witness’s permission.
He “later confronted Cue about the creation of Albri Consulting, LLC because (he) was worried about his personal tax liability and Cue told him directly ‘not to worry about it,’” a news release states.
Cue now has eight felony charges to worry about: prosecutors said they include first-degree counts of racketeering, money laundering and organized scheme to defraud, charges which could each land him in prison for up to three decades.
“No homeowner should have to worry about how their HOA is handling the association’s funds,” State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in her office’s news release. “Our investigation of the thefts at the Hammocks HOA have shed a bright light on a crime that may be occurring throughout our state. Those who feel that an HOA’s funds are there for the taking have made a grievous error. Today’s arrest should make it blatantly clear.”
The current HOA president, Don Kearns, said, “anybody who lived in the Hammocks was touched by this scheme to defraud.”
Current Vice President Idalmen Ardisson said, “it’s a confirmation of everything that we thought.”
“The message is: don’t mess with the Hammocks,” Ardisson said. “Corruption may pay in the beginning but in the end you’re going to get caught.”