American Property MGMT Services indicted in federal court

Millions of dollars are gone after a property management company closed its doors in Collier County.

“To the best of our knowledge and belief, it started in about 2018 and continued all the way through the end of 2021,” said Jason Hamilton Mikes from Hamilton Mikes Law Firm.

The money belonged to more than two dozen homeowners and condominium associations in Southwest Florida.

“Among the 30 or so that we represented, they lost over $10 million to this company. So, you can imagine the significant impact negative impact that that had on those communities,” added Mikes.

The claims were the foundation of a lawsuit filed against American Property Management Services, and now the owners have been indicted by a federal grand jury. Mikes is the lawyer who filed the lawsuit.

“We were able to recover about 1.3 million remaining in their bank accounts, for some were able to recover funds from their insurance carriers, but not everybody had sufficient insurance or any insurance at all. So, there’s still significant sums that were lost and might never be recovered unless the federal government is able to do something about that,” he said.

The owners, Orlando Miserandino Ortiz and his wife Linda Munoz Posada, who were in charge of billing and collections, are not in custody.

“There was a lot of confusion and betrayal,” said Mikes. “It’s our understanding that the owners of American Property Management left the country during the COVID lockdown. And they did have employees sort of running the company in their absence, but we don’t believe those employees knew anything about the fraud being perpetrated. So, it was about the time of the raid that all of this came to light. And, of course, the company collapsed,” he added.

He said communities should make sure they’re checking their bank balances directly with the bank. Don’t rely on your manager to tell you how much money you have in your bank, and if you find any suspicious transactions, ask questions.