The property manager of two Sunny Isles Beach condo buildings, police say,
pilfered hundreds of thousands in homeowner association money.
But Georgina Pineda
didn’t just funnel the funds to her own bank account — she
also gambled the money away at the Miccosukee casino,
according to court documents.
Pineda, 57, was booked into a Miami-Dade jail early Monday
on her second criminal case stemming from her time managing
two luxury condos in the waterfront Northeast Miami-Dade
town. She remained jailed Monday afternoon.
Her defense lawyer, Scott Kotler, declined to talk specifics
about the allegations against Pineda.
“It is too early to tell how these cases will play out,”
Kotler said. “She is actually a very nice woman, and the
root of the problem lies in gambling at slot machines.”
She’s already pleaded not guilty to her first case, filed by
prosecutors in December.
In 2017, Pineda began her job managing the Eden Roc Condos,
17900 N. Bay Rd., which is not associated with the Miami
Beach hotel resort of the same name.
According to Sunny Isles police, Pineda had access to a
condo association debit card, which was supposed to be used
for small expenditures for the complex. But the suspicious
condo association last year began demanding a full audit of
expenditures.
Pineda waffled and “continually made excuses as to why she
was not providing accounting reports to the condo board,”
according to an arrest report by Sunny Isles Detective
Mitchell Glansberg.
“We are going paperless,” Pineda kept telling the board’s
president, police said. |
|
Georgina Pineda -
Miami-Dade Corrections
|
When Pineda finally provided a spreadsheet, it was missing numerous
transactions — including withdrawals at the Miccosukee casino in West
Miami-Dade, the arrest report said. She was also transferring association
money into her own independent business account, police said.
It wasn’t until October 2019 that the condo association president, James
Murray, got bank statements and discovered that “hundreds of thousands of
dollars” were missing, the report said.
When confronted, Pineda “admitted to him and board members that she had a
serious gambling problem and asked for time to pay the money back.”
For the Eden Roc case, Pineda was arrested on Nov. 26, and prosecutors filed
formal charges weeks later.
In the second case, Pineda is accused of stealing between $150,000 and
$400,000 from the King David Condominium, 175555 Atlantic Blvd, another
property she managed during 2018.