HOA president colluded with relatives to steal from Kendall condo complex, police say
A former condominium association president, her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend fleeced thousands of dollars from a West Kendall condo complex, police say. Now, the trio is facing prison time.
Idoris Pedroso, 63, turned herself in Wednesday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center after being accused of grand theft under $100,000 and organized fraud under $50,000.
Her daughter Yasnely Pedroso, 38, and boyfriend Yoel Tapanes Fernandez, 42, face the same charges. The couple was arrested at their Southwest Miami-Dade home on Feb. 15.
“The [defendants] entered into a systematic, ongoing course of conduct with the intent to defraud the association with the intent to obtain funds from the association by false pretenses,” police said in an arrest report.
It’s currently unclear how much money was stolen in the alleged scheme and for how long it operated.
According to the report, Idoris has been on the Westwind Lakes Garden Homes Condominium Association board since 2015 and served as president until December 2023. The association comprises of 50 buildings with 194 units and charges a monthly fee of $214.
As president, Idoris hired her daughter Yasnely as an assistant. The hiring came after Yasnely, police say, had been fired by the HOA’s previous board for destroying records among “other discrepancies that were discovered.”
How did the scheme unfold?
Investigators also uncovered that Yasnely, who has worked at the association for 12 years, hadn’t reported her wages, though she said she was paid more than $40,000 yearly. And from 2020 to 2021, police say more than $42,000 in checks from the association ended in the hands of Yasnely’s boyfriend Tapanes Fernandez. At least two board members must endorse checks provided by the association. But, according to the report, the three checks police reviewed only had Idoris’ signature.
Authorities tracked down the money to an account Tapanes Fernandez ran for Yoel Maintenance LLC, a company he founded that Florida business records list as “currently inactive,” according to the report.
During the investigation, a witness came forward and told police that Yasnley asked him to fabricate an invoice to justify the sums of money in Tapanes Fernandez’s account. But the witness said he refused because he knew that Tapanes Fernandez “did not do work around the association and he did not want to jeopardize his business.”
The current HOA board, according to investigators, also couldn’t find any records, contracts or invoices on file related to any work allegedly performed by Tapanes Fernandez.
When interviewed by police, Tapanes Fernandez said he worked around the association painting parking bumpers, maintaining the pool and pressure cleaning. Yasnley denied the fraud scheme and said the HOA board should have copies of the invoices.
However, their accounts weren’t adding up.
A review of association records offered a glimpse into how transactions with vendors operate. In 2019, a vendor painted the buildings’ parking bumpers in 2019 for $320 per bumper. That work was documented — and only cost around $3,800 for all 388 bumpers.
The latest arrests aren’t the only time scandal has rocked a Kendall HOA in recent years.
In 2022, prosecutors alleged that three past and present board members of the West Kendall’s Hammocks Community Association, one of the largest HOAs in Florida, engaged for years in a complicated, multi-layered scheme that included the creation of several “shell companies” that netted more than $1.4 million between 2017 and 2022.
