MIAMI — Last month, a self-described Texas minister claimed members of his church owned six units at the Surfside condominium building that collapsed and that they had died in the tragedy. He wanted to collect $3.1 million in damages for their loss.
But the pastor of Baptist Faith Church in Dallas didn’t even show up for a critical Miami-Dade court hearing Wednesday on his claim, noting he could not attend because he “underwent life-threatening surgery.”
“He’s on life support,” a church representative emailed a court-appointed attorney, who has been coordinating the damage claims for the Champlain Towers South class-action case brought by the relatives of 98 people who died in the collapse last year. “Other pastors are on a tight schedule. ... If the court wishes to disallow or deny the [church’s] legal settlement, go ahead. ... You don’t need to reply.”
In short order Wednesday, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman rejected the church’s damage claim — along with more than 450 others — after the attorney processing them found they were “fraudulent” and recommended that the judge toss them out.
Hanzman inquired if any of the claimants were in court to show proof, such as documents, to back up their damage request. No one responded, so he issued his rejection immediately. Adding a bit of intrigue to the brief hearing was the presence of a Miami-Dade County police squad, which was on hand in case any of the dubious claimants seeking damages actually showed up in court and lied to the judge about their losses.
Before the hearing, a Miami Herald reporter reached out to a representative of the purported Texas church for comment, and a person calling himself “Pastor Landry Oledible” responded by email: “Your interview won’t be of any use.” An internet search of the church’s address — 1451 Stirling Ave., Dallas, Texas — listed on its damage claim form showed it was actually a single-family home — not identified as a house of worship. And the phone number also listed on the claim form was no longer in service.
The pastor who filed the original Baptist church’s damage claim said that congregation members were living in Champlain Towers South condos at the time of the collapse and that they perished in “the most devastating event of all ages.” The pastor, identified as the Rev. “Kelly Dean” PhD on the claim form, listed six unit numbers that never existed in the Surfside building. Yet in his claim, the pastor asked for $3.1 million for the loss of three Ford pickup trucks, 40 laptops, 16 televisions, carpet, “vital records and furnitures.”
The claim never said how many church members died or what their names were, but it was quite specific about the itemized value of property lost, including $490,481 for church vans, microphones and speakers.
“All supporting documents were not recovered at the terrible scenes of the collapse of the building,” the pastor said through his colleague in a follow-up email to the attorney handling the Surfside condo damage claims. “There’s no fragments that was recovered due to extreme hit from the building fall.”
Michael Goldberg, the court-appointed receiver for the Champlain Towers South condo association, is the attorney who brought the bogus claims to the judge’s attention after he received a pile of them following the $1.1 billion settlement reached in the Surfside class-action case on June 24. It marked the one-year anniversary of the 12-story, 136-unit oceanfront building’s collapse.
Many of the phony claimants learned about the massive settlement fund on a website called hustlermoneyblog.com that alerts people how to submit “no-proof” claims for lawsuits nationwide, according to Goldberg, the condo association’s receiver. The blog, which features a graphic of a stack of hundred-dollar bills alongside a judge’s gavel, listed the Champlain Towers South case and an official claims form that was posted on Goldberg’s CTS website. Earlier this month, the Surfside case was no longer on hustlermoneyblog.com and the site couldn’t be reached for comment.
Goldberg asked Judge Hanzman to dismiss the “presumptively fraudulent” claims, saying hundreds of dubious people around the country were “seeking to wrongfully capitalize on this tragedy at the expense of the true victims.” Goldberg predicted that few, if any, would appear for Wednesday’s hearing because of the risk of committing perjury and being arrested for filing false claims. The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office was apprised of the false damage claims.
The magic number of $1 billion appeared to be a magnet for the scammers. Their stories, based on applications submitted to the receiver, were pretty far-fetched.
An Oregon man claimed he drove across the country to vacation in Miami Beach and met a kindly stranger named Luis at a bar who suggested that instead of sleeping in his car the man stay with a friend at Champlain Towers South in Surfside. They went to the condo building and after just one minute of waiting outside, the man heard a loud boom, got hit in the head by a falling chunk of concrete and blacked out.
When he woke up, he was lying next to the rubble of the building that had collapsed. Shocked, the man left the scene where 98 people died and drove back to Oregon. He had never told anyone his terrifying story, as he sought to collect $50,000 in personal injury damages.
“I just want that part of my mind gone,” the 33-year-old Oregon man said in a letter to the receiver. “I wish I could somehow erase that part, but I cannot.”
There were also two separate claims with identical handwriting, identical first names and identical return addresses, one seeking compensation for a late-term miscarriage and the other for being “facially and extremely disfigured” during the collapse.
A man who said he lived in unit 910 filed a claim to be reimbursed for his loss of contents and furniture. But Goldberg, the receiver, traced the origin of the interior photos the man submitted to a listing on Apartments.com for unit 1009.
“The attached is clear fraud,” Goldberg said of photos downloaded from the web. “Although he was creative.”
Hanzman and retired Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jonathan Colby have been reviewing the wrongful death and personal injury damage claims of victims in a series of emotional, in-person hearings from late July through August. They conducted dozens of mini-trials and expect to have notified all of the claimants of their damage awards by this Friday.
In total, Goldberg said he received 741 claims — but 458 were flagged as scams from “deceitful individuals” who appeared to have “no connection” to Champlain South.
Among the suspicious responses: 389 for “simple” personal injury claims, seeking damages of $50,000; another 13 for “full” personal injury claims, seeking unspecified damages, and six for wrongful-death claims, seeking $1 million or more.
By comparison, Goldberg received 283 legitimate responses, including 72 from former Champlain South residents and others seeking $50,000 each for personal injury and 58 seeking unspecified damages for personal injury. In addition, there are relatives of 19 people who died seeking wrongful-death damages of $1 million, the minimum set by Judge Hanzman, and the kin of 79 people who died seeking larger damage awards.
