A federal judge in Florida is allowing a fraud and conspiracy claim to proceed in a lawsuit filed against a construction company and its owner.
Multiple apartment complexes, known as Continental 332, LLC, Continental 298 Fund LLC, Continental 306 Fund LLC and Continental 326 Fund LLC, sued David Albertelli and Albertelli Construction Inc (ACI) in the Fort Myers division of the Middle District of Florida for allegedly engaging in racketeering behavior under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
“Defendant David Albertelli runs Defendant ACI as a corrupt enterprise that used many unlawful schemes consisting of fraud, theft, statutory violations, misappropriation of funds through improper depositing of joint checks, bad faith, intentional breaches of contracts, wire fraud, mail fraud and bank fraud, and did so on four different construction projects that damaged the Plaintiffs,” stated the plaintiff’s opening brief, which was signed by Angelo Eguizabal, vice president of Continental Properties Company, Inc. and manager of the four LLC funds.
But defendants argued that plaintiffs had filed inappropriate Civil RICO claims.
“In short, the disputes between the parties, at bottom, are contractual in nature and do not rise to the level of a 'racketeering' conspiracy,” wrote Reese J. Henderson, Jr, counsel for the defendants, in his Motion to Dismiss.
U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell, however, determined in her decision that plaintiffs had shown a pattern of racketeering activity.
“The enterprise also involved other schemes, like inflating costs and using sham entities to intercept payments,” she wrote in her March 13 opinion and order.
The defendants were worse than incompetent contractors, according to plaintiff’s lawsuit Continental 332 Fund, LLC et al v. Kozlowski et al.
“They used the financial risk posed to the funds on the different projects to induce the funds into forwarding money to ACI which were then diverted from their intended purpose and wrongfully converted to the Defendants’ own use,” Eguizabal stated on behalf of the plaintiffs.