Investigators seize financial documents at Hammocks Association club house

MIAMI – Documents that for years homeowners at Hammocks Community in West Kendall were blocked from seeing have been seized by state attorney’s office investigators. 

 Among those documents, are the financial records that could very well detail the theft of residents’ funds.

“I’m not surprised they were hiding evidence,” Rosivette de Jesus told CBS4. She is a concerned homeowner who has lived in the Hammocks community for the last 17 years. 

She said homeowners like her were denied access to documents for years.

Everything changed last week when circuit judge Beatrice Butchko, from a cell phone, fired all the employees at the office and appointed a receiver to carry on all the functions of the association’s office. 

That receiver allowed investigators to come to the office and take all the necessary documents they were once blocked from getting.

“They knew they were being investigated, so they might need to hide something somewhere, under the floor, I think that’s a little bit extreme,” said De Jesus referring to what our news partners at the Miami Herald revealed in an article stating that one cache of documents was found hidden under the floor in the office. 

When CBS4 reached out to the state attorney’s office to confirm the information, they sent a statement saying,
“As this is an ongoing investigation, we can neither confirm nor deny.”

Last week the state attorney’s office charged four board members and a former one, accusing them of stealing millions of dollars from homeowners. 

The five individuals allegedly wrote checks to vendors for work that was never done, who then kicked back payments to President Marglli Gallego. 

All suspects were arrested over a week ago.

“(Investigators) were asking for financial documents… they were asking for election documents (for some time),” said Marco Antonio Real, another homeowner who was one of the residents who filed a lawsuit to have a receiver take over the control of the association. 

“I came to this country from Nicaragua seeking freedom and democracy and for the last few years. We had a dictatorship,” said this man who encouraged his children to buy a house in the Hammocks because he once thought it was the right community for a family. 

 Now, he and other 6,500 homeowners seem ready for what investigators will reveal.