A contractor and a south Florida condominium property manager have been charged in a kickback scheme.
Richard Thomas Murray, 62, head of AP Construction Solutions, of Pompano Beach, was charged last week with providing $186,000 to Carlos Jose Mejia, property manager at Venetian Gardens at Country Club of Miami condos, according to the state attorney’s office and local news reports.
Mejia, 51, is charged with accepting the alleged kickbacks, which were designed to guarantee that Murray’s firm won the repair contracts, Miami-Dade County court records indicate.
The payments, made in 10 installments, were disguised as a “loan agreement” but investigators found no evidence that anything was repaid by Mejia, CBS News Miami reported. The arrangement apparently continued throughout 2024 and 2025.
Venetian Gardens in Hialeah comprises 21 buildings, most of them two or three stories tall. Many are in need of repairs, and condo residents have complained th
at needed work has not been done for months, CBS reported. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said her office began the investigation after the news station exposed it in 2024, the station reported.
“All the while, the property became unbearable and perhaps dangerous as it crumbled around its residents,” Rundle said at a news conference shown on NBC 6 South Florida.
The condo association is managed by GRS Management, which oversees other condominiums in the area, according to the GRS website. Officials there could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening.
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Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation records show Murray holds a valid building contractor’s license. AP Construction Solutions, registered to a different person but with the same address as Murray’s incorporation records show, has a general contractor’s license.
Financial irregularities at a number of Florida condominium associations have been ru
mored and reported for years. One of the most famous cases came in 2022 when board members with Florida’s largest homeowners’ association, known as the Hammocks Community Association, were charged with skimming millions from the association over several years.
Florida lawmakers in 2024 formally outlawed kickback payments to condo management. Since then, several investigations have been launched. This summer, six people were charged in a $5.8 million fraud scheme at five condomin
ium associations in the Miami area, TheRealDeal real estate news site and others have reported. The culprits allegedly diverted insurance payments and loan funds to conspirators.
