“They ran it down to the ground,” said Debbie Orlowsky. “It’s all full of mold because they didn’t pay the rent there. We’re bankrupt. I don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s people here with children, and there’s families. There’s 916 apartments here and they didn’t care. They had no heart, no soul.”
Orlowsky is referring to former board president and former Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputy Santiago Perez, his wife Revital Sharony and former condo manager Donna Mantin, whom current board members claim drove the condo into bankruptcy. Criminal complaints have been filed against them alleging that hundreds of thousands of dollars in controversial all-cash parking fees levied on guests that were collected under their leadership have vanished.
“There wasn’t deposits made into the bank,” said Peter Orlowsky, a member of the board who filed a criminal complaint in the case.
Records also show that at the end of Perez’s time as president last fall, he began writing large checks on the Jade Winds account to cash, adding up to more than $800,000. Perez claimed to pay major condo bills with the money, but now the board is facing the difficult task of trying to account for all the money. In a statement to Local 10 News, BB&T Vice President David White confirmed the bank was conducting an internal investigation into what he called a “very unfortunate situation for all those involved.”
When Santiago and Mantin left their positions last fall, board members were able to obtain emails and credit card statements of Sharony, Perez’s wife, who is a former Margate police officer. What they found shocked them. The credit card bills, according to criminal complaints, showed that more than $170,000 had been deposited into Sharony’s account in an 11-month period, indicating a lavish lifestyle some board members believed couldn’t be sustained by two retired police officers. Nearly $20,000 in cash was deposited in the account in one 12-day period, the billings show. Read more: