New arrest made in $2 million fraud scheme at Florida’s largest HOA, Miami-Dade authorities say

Devoun Cetoute
·2 min read
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More than a year after leaders of Florida’s largest homeowners association, which is located in Kendall, were charged in a money-laundering scheme, another arrest was announced Friday in the ongoing fraud saga.

Kevin Leonardo Alzate, 32, was charged with perjury by contradictory statements, fabricating physical evidence and resisting an officer without violence. He was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Friday and still remains there.

“I am thoroughly elated. This is what I would consider a early holiday gift for the residents of the Hammocks who have been tortured and brutalized for the last seven years,” said Don Kearns, a 29-year resident who is president of the Hammocks Community Association’s Advisory Board of Directors.

According to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, Alzate played an integral role in a plot to steal $2 million from the Hammock’s HOA bank accounts over several years.

READ MORE: Florida homeowners rebelled, hope to see justice after years of battling HOA board

Alzate is the cousin of former HOA President Marglli Gallego, who was one of the five people first arrested and charged in November 2022 for several financial crimes victimizing the HOA, the state attorney’s office said in a release Friday.

The other four charged are former board president Monica Ghilardi, former board member Myriam Rodgers, former board member Yoleidis Lopez Garcia and Gallego’s husband, Jose Antonio Gonzalez. Trial dates for those four and Gallego have yet to be set.

READ MORE: Leaders of Florida’s largest homeowners association charged in $2 million fraud scheme

“Not only did Mr. Alzate’s alleged activities allow our charged HOA Board members to continue their thefts, but the actions were a deliberate slap in the face to our Circuit Court Judges and our courts,” said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in the statement.

Kearns said he is still surprised at the “depth and complexity of this criminal enterprise.”

“My holiday hope for the Hammocks is that this is the first of many arrests,” he said.