Years before Juan Awais was accused of running a $5.8 million condo association fraud scheme, unit owners were suing him and his property management firm with claims that echo what investigators now allege.
Awais was arrested over allegations he puppeteered the scheme through his business, Sunshine Management Services. After his attorney’s fervent arguments in court last week, a judge reduced Awais’ bond to $2 million from $3 million. Court records indicate he hasn’t bonded out. If he does, he is ordered to a total lockdown at home.
Among Awais’ attorney’s assertions in court: Awais has a good reputation in Miami-Dade County, with roughly 20 family members and friends coming to his hearing and willing to pledge their assets for his bond. After earning a law degree in his native Cuba, Awais became a U.S. citizen and made Miami-Dade his home for the past 30 years. He has never been arrested before, his attorney pointed out.
Civil lawsuits filed over the past eight years primarily against Awais’ Sunshine Management claim wrongdoing including allegations tied to association vendors, payments and board elections. Some of the complaints closely track what state investigators alleged in their 55-page arrest warrant issued late last month, including that Sunshine Management worked with board members to siphon funds from associations. The complaints also bring up companies and people mentioned in the warrant but not charged.
The civil cases didn’t result in any major orders against the firm, and judges in several instances sided with Sunshine Management. Many of the suits were dismissed, settled or, as in the case of one former Sunshine employee, went to arbitration.
The arrest warrant boils down to the allegation that although Awais’ Sunshine provided legitimate property management at three condo associations, its representatives steered repair contracts for roofs, impact windows and sliding glass doors to vendors tied to co-conspirators. While these vendors then paid the legitimate repair contractors, they also funneled insurance and loan funds to entities tied to Awais and some of the five other people charged, according to the warrant. The scheme also diverted funds from delinquent-assessment collections, estoppel fees charged when a condo unit is sold, and surplus proceeds from foreclosure and tax sales, the warrant says.
The warrant raises 32 counts against Awais, including racketeering, money laundering and organized scheme to defraud. The others arrested are the 60-year-old Awais’ step-daughter Johana Perez-Tapia, and her mother, Delma Alonso, who at one point was in a relationship with Awais. Also arrested were Michael Irizarry and Cynthea Waltz, who are married, and Juliet Ramos.
Irizarry has pleaded not guilty. “He is presumed innocent under the law, and we look forward to the judicial process,” his attorney, Pat Dray, said in a statement.
Waltz also maintains her innocence and is “entitled to the presumption of innocence,” her attorney, Michelle Kramer, said.
“An arrest warrant reflects allegations, not proof,” Kramer said, pointing out that no formal charges have been filed and if they are, Waltz will plead not guilty.
This is likely a reference to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office issuing a warrant, which a judge found had enough probable cause for arrests, though the state attorney hasn’t issued an indictment or information that officially kicks off criminal prosecution.
Attorneys for others accused in the criminal case didn’t return requests for comment.
Here’s a look at what unit owners claimed happened at their associations in civil lawsuits.
In 2020, Las Vistas at Doral condominium association, home to 969 units, sued Awais, Sunshine Management and Florida’s Property Maintenance Group, led by Awais.
From 2012 to 2016, two board members, who also were sued, worked with Awais to sign a series of contracts with companies that on the surface seemed unrelated but actually were “interconnected” and had ties to Awais, according to the complaint. The contracts weren’t adequately bid out and were signed “with the intent to defraud” Las Vistas, the suit claimed. This included agreements with Sunshine Management, Florida’s Property Maintenance and Security Forever, a security services provider not named as a defendant.
When Las Vistas residents voted in a new board in 2016, Security Forever left the property and records pertaining to the association’s past dealings went missing, the complaint says.
But two years later, Security Forever sued Las Vistas, claiming wrongful termination, and association documents popped up during that litigation, helping the association reconstruct its past dealings: Security Forever “grossly overcharged” the association, and Las Vistas had paid over $400,000 to entities and people with zero backup documents to justify the payments, according to the association’s 2020 complaint.
In court motions, the former board members denied any wrongdoing and argued that the claims against them are full of “buzz words” devoid of specifics on how they allegedly defrauded the association and what they gained personally. Awais and Sunshine denied wrongdoing and claimed the claims against them were “nothing but bare-bones legal conclusions” and lacked facts.
The judge eventually granted numerous motions to dismiss, leaving the association to amend its complaint, this time only targeting the two former board members and Sunshine Management. After the two sides settled, the case was dismissed in 2023, legal filings show.
Aside from Security Forever, the litigation also referenced Luis Llanes, identified in the complaint as “organizer” of Security Forever and its managing member from 2009 to 2019.
Both pop up in the arrest warrant, which says Security Forever was the security provider at Mira Villas, Los Suenos and Samari Lake East condo associations, and that Llanes and Awais were at one point signatories to the firm’s bank account. The warrant’s tracing of money flows also shows funds flowed to Llanes. He isn’t charged with a crime.
Samari Lake East unit owners Delia Morales and Maritza Escobar twice sued the association and Sunshine Management over board elections in 2021 and 2022.
In the first complaint, they alleged Sunshine was seen asking unit owners to sign empty ballot envelopes, with a unit owner and her husband signing sworn statements they were among those asked to sign empty envelopes. Residents also claimed they saw the management company campaigning for the current board members and outright asked homeowners for their vote, according to the complaint. Ultimately, the election was held in April 2021, overseen by a state-appointed election monitor, and no one contested the results. A judge in the case later granted the association and Sunshine’s motion to dismiss.
The following year, Morales and Escobar filed a similar complaint against Sunshine, again bringing up the 2021 sworn affidavits signed by the unit owner and her husband. Across the complex, there are other unit owners with similar claims but they’re “reluctant to come forward in fear of reprisals,” such as non-approval of tenants and parking space requests, the suit said. Again, a judge granted Sunshine’s request to dismiss the case after the election was held under a state-appointed monitor’s oversight, court records say.
Elizabeth Alvarez Gonzalez worked as assistant manager for Sunshine at Samari Lake East from 2014 to 2019.
In early 2019, she found out that the board was paying Sunshine “outside of contract” and that some board members were “stealing” from the association, according to her complaint against Sunshine filed that same year.
Gonzalez’s lawsuit was ultimately for retaliation due to her termination in July 2019, alleging that Awais told her to leave the office after she alerted board members Ivonne Avellaneda and Iris Hernandez that they should “cease writing checks” to Sunshine because they were “outside of contract,” the suit says. The case has been inactive since 2023 when a judge agreed with Sunshine that the issue should be hashed out in arbitration pursuant to Gonzalez’s employment contract.
Also in 2019, former board members Juan Carlos Dieppa and Marcelino Ballesteros were arrested on allegations of diverting funds from the unit owners, according to Gonzalez’s lawsuit.
Records confirm Dieppa and Ballesteros were arrested at the time on grand theft charges, with both pleading not guilty, though charging documents detailing the allegations aren’t available on the court docket. The state eventually dismissed the charges after both completed a pre-trial intervention program.
Avelino Gonzalez, who represented Sunshine in the civil lawsuit, as well as Dieppa and Ballesteros, as criminal defense counsel, didn’t return a request for comment.
In 2018, Sunshine twice sued Los Portales Phase III, a 94-unit condo complex in Hialeah, for early termination of the property management firm’s contract, arguing it’s owed $12,600, according to the complaints.
One of the cases was moved to county court.
In the second lawsuit, Los Portales responded by arguing that Sunshine isn’t entitled to the full amount and alleging the company filed “falsified, fraudulent and/or forged invoices” for services to non-common areas, issued checks to former board members or their relatives, and mismanaged or misappropriated association funds. This case was dismissed after a confidential settlement was reached in mediation.
