Former employees sue Joe Carollo, say he used Miami city agency for personal gain
Two former employees of a downtown Miami city agency have accused the agency’s chairman, Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo, of attempting to use public funds to cover a yacht party for his family and friends, paying a TV station owned by “close personal friends” to broadcast an event, storing cash parking payments in an easily accessible “money room” that was prone to theft, and supporting the purchase of a “suspicious” mobile veterinary truck that was later searched by police when an employee discovered “controlled substances and prescription drugs” intended for animals at the agency office.
In a whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court on Tuesday evening, Jose Suarez, the former executive director of the Bayfront Park Management Trust, and Jose Canto, the agency’s former finance director, accused Carollo of retaliation. The employees, who both left the agency in December, say they were forced out.
The lawsuit focuses in on an agency where Carollo has had an influential role as he reaches his term limits as the city’s District 3 commissioner later this year. The Bayfront Park Management Trust, which is chaired by Carollo, is a city agency that maintains the city’s bayfront parks and generates revenue from hosting large-scale events including Ultra Music Festival.
In addition to Carollo and the Bayfront Park Management Trust, the lawsuit also names Javier Baños, a Trust board member and Carollo’s personal accountant, as a defendant. According to the lawsuit, Baños is married to Carollo’s cousin.
The lawsuit lays out allegations of “unsettling discoveries” made by Suarez and Canto as they set out to fix “accounting issues” in the agency. Some of those alleged discoveries included the absence of an adequate accounting or auditing system; no policy or procedure to ensure vendors were selected through a competitive bidding process; and no requirement for expenses paid by the Trust to be supported by a contract or invoice.
“Carollo and Baños both threatened, and then set out to undermine and force the departures of Suarez and Canto after Suarez and Canto began questioning the Trust’s lack of proper accounting practices,” the lawsuit alleges, thus enabling Carollo to use agency funds to benefit “Carollo’s political allies” and “overpay Carollo’s friends and family members with the intention of generating commissions and kickbacks for Carollo and his wife.”
Suarez has worked for Carollo for years. He was hired as executive director of Bayfront Park Management Trust in March, and before that he was Carollo’s chief of staff from 2019 to 2022.
“I think loyalty is important, but I’m not going to jail for anybody,” Suarez said in an interview with the Miami Herald on Tuesday. “And I had made that known very early on in my career.”
The plaintiffs are being represented by attorneys Jeff Gutchess and Jay Rhodes. Gutchess has led previous litigation against Carollo, including the lawsuit that resulted in a $63.5 million judgment against the commissioner. Rhodes previously worked in Carollo’s commission office as a senior policy adviser.
Speaking on behalf of Carollo, Marc Sarnoff, an attorney and former Miami city commissioner, said Suarez wasn’t pushed out or terminated, but that he resigned. He said the lawsuit “probably lacks merit.”
“Commissioner Carollo, once again sued by Jeff Gutchess, looks forward to his day in court — a fair day in court — and will defend himself vigorously,” Sarnoff said.
Reached by phone, Carollo also took aim at Gutchess, whom he called an “ambulance chaser” and “desperate.” He said Gutchess’ goal with the latest lawsuit is to get Carollo to agree to a settlement in one of the remaining lawsuits that Gutchess is litigating against the city on behalf of the Ball & Chain owners, the plaintiffs in the case that ended in the $63.5 million judgment.
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Carollo said Gutchess “feels that he could extort me, blackmail me, by representing these people with all these lies so that I would cave in.”
“Well,” he added, “I’m not doing that.”
Reached Tuesday night, Baños said he “emphatically” denies the lawsuit’s allegations, declining further comment.
A city spokesperson acknowledged the Herald’s request for comment on Tuesday but did not provide a response to the lawsuit.
Deals with ‘personal friends’
The lawsuit alleges that Bayfront Park Management Trust funds were used to pay Carollo’s “personal friends premium contracts in atypical fashions.”
That included paying $150,000 to AméricaTeVé, a television station, for its broadcasting of the Trust’s million-dollar New Year’s Eve party, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that Carollo and his wife, Marjorie, are “close personal friends” with the owners of TeVé, “which actively supports Carollo’s political career.”
Instead, the Trust could have selected another station, such as Univision or Telemundo, the lawsuit states, to potentially broadcast the event “free of charge” or to even pay the Trust for the rights to broadcast “as the broadcasters profit by selling advertising.”
Asked if he does, in fact, have a personal relationship with AméricaTeVé’s owners, Carollo responded: “I have friends as an elected official in many areas, in many places.”
However, Carollo said the New Year’s Eve arrangement was “strictly a business deal” that included the Trust — not the broadcaster — profiting off of the ad slots, generating what he estimated to be about $130,000 that evening.
The lawsuit alleges that the Trust was also paying $6,000 a month — an amount considered to be “wildly overpaying” — to a company called Macro Films LLC for social media work. It goes on to say that Macro Films runs the social media accounts for Carollo’s District 3 office, which is “also overpaying” the company, according to the lawsuit.
During an unrelated court hearing over the summer, Marjorie Carollo testified that she had previously hired Macro Films as a subcontractor through her company, MTC Group, to produce one video. Carollo said there is no further connection between his wife and the company.
The lawsuit also alleges that Carollo attempted to use agency funds to cover a yacht holiday party for himself, his family, his friends and staffers in his District 3 office. The agency learned about it in December when it received a $20,000 invoice for a “Private Charter Fee” for an upcoming party it was hosting for Carollo, according to the lawsuit.
Upon receiving the invoice, the lawsuit alleges that Canto “requested any document to support the invoice including any agreement by the Trust or its Board to pay the invoice, which did not exist” and that the yacht company later retracted the invoice.
“When Suarez and Canto raised their concerns and refused to pay the invoice, Carollo retaliated at the next Board meeting, publicly berating and defaming both of them,” the lawsuit alleges.
Carollo called those allegations “outrageous” and “a total lie.” He said that while there have been holiday celebrations attended by New Year’s Eve party performers, Trust members and District 3 staff in the past, a yacht party did not take place last year.
Beyond those allegations, the lawsuit claims the Trust paid $60,000 for Carollo’s Little Havana Fridays parties, “despite the Bayfront Trust having no association with Carollo’s event nor deriving any benefit from Carollo’s event.”
As Trust chairman, Carollo also championed the Dogs and Cats Walkway, a pathway of colorful cat and dog sculptures in Maurice Ferré Park. The lawsuit makes reference to a check the Trust wrote for $562,500 that had a “mere reference to ‘dogs & cats’ [but] had no supportive documents such as a written contract or even a detailed invoice supporting the check.”
The ‘money room’
When Suarez first arrived at the Trust in March of 2024, the agency was still collecting fees from its parking lots — one of the agency’s “main sources” of revenue — in cash, according to the lawsuit.
This resulted “in employees not only handling thousands of dollars in cash but tens of thousands of dollars being stored in a room designated as ‘the money room,’ allowing employees and others to easily ‘pinch’ or take various sums of hard cash for personal gain,” the lawsuit states.
When Suarez switched the agency to cashless parking fees, “revenue immediately increased as ‘pinching’ or ‘skimming’ of the cash was no longer possible,” the complaint alleges.
In an interview Tuesday night, Carollo said the cash-only parking payment system was in place before he became chairman, and that he, too, wanted the Trust to switch to credit cards. Carollo said he personally “never went anywhere near” the so-called money room.
If Suarez was concerned about theft, Carollo said, “why didn’t he say anything to me or the board?”
“Never did he say a word,” he added.
Vet mobile & Internal Affairs investigation
In Suarez’s telling of events, his relationship with Carollo began to unravel after Suarez discovered a trove of veterinary supplies at the Bayfront Park Management Trust headquarters in April.
According to the lawsuit, Suarez, after finding the supplies, first contacted the assistant city attorney assigned to the Trust, who then looped in the city attorney. The three agreed to contact the Miami Police Department, which was dispatched to the Trust office and seized boxes of veterinary supplies.
The lawsuit states that Suarez discovered the Trust was in possession of various veterinary medications, including “Schedule IV Controlled Substances and prescription drugs,” such as sedatives and anesthetics.
The police then “took possession of the drugs and later launched an Internal Affairs (‘IA’) Investigation,” the lawsuit says. Suarez was interviewed by Internal Affairs as part of an investigation, according to the complaint.
“When Suarez informed Carollo that Suarez was going to assist the IA investigation,” the lawsuit alleges, “Carollo berated Suarez, stating ‘I hoped you learned your lesson in trying to be transparent’ and ominously telling Suarez that he needed ‘to lawyer up.’”
The lawsuit goes on to allege that the Internal Affairs investigation was closed “or covered up, with suspicious irregularities, including (a) the prescription drugs being destroyed shortly after the investigation began and (b) the drugs Bayfront Park purchased and possessed being rebranded as ‘lost property.’” The Miami Police Department did not respond to a request for comment about the allegation that the investigation was “covered up.”
Carollo disputed Suarez’s telling of events, stating that no controlled substances were discovered on Trust property. He also pointed to his political foe, District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo, as inciting the Internal Affairs investigation.
Email records show that Pardo’s staff emailed Police Chief Manuel Morales in October saying that Pardo was calling for “a formal investigation” into “potential malfeasance and nefarious activities surrounding this city board/entity relating to the acquisition of these supplies.”
According to the lawsuit, Bayfront Park Management Trust paid $115,000 for a mobile veterinary truck to an entity called Rex Mobile Vet LLC, which was formed “four months after the Trust announced its ‘emergency’ plan to procure the vehicle.”
The lawsuit, however, states that the 2007 Ford E450 was worth about $30,000.
“Rex Mobile never operated the van as a mobile veterinarian clinic,” the lawsuit alleges, “but rather purchased it as part of a plan to reconvey it to the Trust, which it did a mere five months later.”
Suarez and Canto are seeking back pay and damages for lost wages in an unspecified amount. Suarez said he is owed about three months of his salary and payout for unused vacation days.
This story was originally published January 22, 2025 at 8:14 AM.
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