On one of Miami Beach’s richest streets, neighbors are clashing over a superyacht
A dock dispute is pretty standard issue neighbor drama. But in Miami, this tale involves $20 million dollar homes, a superyacht, marijuana edibles, allegations of fraud — and Shakira.
It begins with 78-year-old Louise Attkiss lounging by her pool one evening last fall with her boyfriend after indulging in a medically prescribed weed gummy to soothe her aches and pains. It hit her so hard, she said, she had trouble figuring out how to turn on the pool lights at the home she’d lived in for decades.
Her Mediterranean-inspired home overlooks Biscayne Bay and the downtown Miami skyline. It sits on an exclusive stretch of North Bay Road, recently dubbed “Miami’s richest road” by the Wall Street Journal, despite the fact that its within the city of Miami Beach.
That night, her new neighbors knocked on the door and introduced themselves. After chatting for a while, they asked Attkiss if she would sign a document allowing them to build a new, expanded dock next door. She agreed, inking the documents and bidding the couple goodnight.
The next morning, Attkiss realized that she was too impaired to sign the contract and fired off a text — since immortalized in court documents — revoking her consent to the dock. After some back-and-fourth with the neighbors, including reviewing more detailed plans, she texted them again to confirm that she didn’t want the dock next door.
“There is no way I could approve that,” she wrote on Dec. 9, 2024. Attkiss thought that was the end of things.
Instead, it was the start of a pricey legal battle that will be duked out in front of the county’s Environmental Quality Control Board next week. One that, lawyers argued in court documents, features “audacious and continuing fraud” and poses a safety hazard for boaters.
The lawyer for the dock-building homeowners, litigator Robert Zarco, called the legal fight “Monday morning quarterbacking” and could set a precedent that would “crater” home values on the street, where he also owns a home.
“Miami Beach is known as a playground for people who do well, who can afford it,” he said. “To create a situation where your neighbor can say what you can or can’t do with your property and step on the toes of the government can have a total snowball effect.”
A new home for a superyacht
On one side, you have the homeowners trying to build a home for their 88-foot superyacht — an Azimut 88. That big of a boat doesn’t fit parallel to the seawall along the property, so they needed special permission from Miami-Dade to build a mooring slip that sticks out perpendicular, into the open waters of the bay.
When the homeowner — Roland Peralta, co-founder of hair growth supplement company Nutrafol — submitted all the documents to obtain the permit, it included signed and notarized letters of consent from Attkiss as well as a representative of the homeowner on the other side, international pop icon Shakira.
With an approved permit in hand, Peralta built the dock.
While construction crews dredged sand and pounded in mooring pilings, someone new moved into Attkiss’ home: Randy Gelber, chief financial officer for Epic Games, the company behind the popular video game Fortnite.
Gelber and his family didn’t know about the dock, and they didn’t like it. Their first encounter with the fully-staffed yacht was when the neighbor docked it there for a big party a few months after they moved in. The Gelbers say it blocked their view and presented a safety risk for nearby boaters.
“If it were there, I don’t think I would have bought the house,” he told the Miami Herald.
When he asked Attkiss about it, she told him she revoked her consent and had no idea it was still happening.
Now informed, she fired off more texts to the neighbors, fierier than before: “My guard was let down and you took advantage of my state and played into it. Took advantage of me when I was not legally ‘of sound mind’,” she wrote. “I did not give you permission to build that dock.”
Upon closer inspection of the county records, Gelber also saw that Attkiss’ letter of consent was notarized by a professional notary and submitted to the county days after Gelber closed on the house — three months after she signed it and then revoked her signature.
In an interrogatory with Gelber’s lawyer, the notary admitted she notarized it on Feb. 13, despite the fact that Attkiss signed the document in November. That’s a no-no for notaries, who are legally required to be present (even virtually) for the signature and to confirm the identity of the person signing a document.
“Indeed, knowing that it could not properly obtain the required notarized consent, the 3114 Owner fraudulently procured, fraudulently notarized, and fraudulently submitted the required consent in a material violation of the law and County requirements,” Gelber’s lawyer, former Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, wrote in a letter to the county.
Zarco, who also represents the notary in court, vehemently denies that fraud occurred.
“While unfortunate, it’s a legally harmless distraction,” he said.
Faced with these new allegations, Miami-Dade suspended the permit in August. That leaves Zarco’s client stuck paying $10,000 to $12,000 a month to dock his boat elsewhere while the legal details get sorted, he said.
“We are not concerned, my client did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said. “That is all smokescreen and does not go to the essential analysis of my client be able to build that dock and build it with permits.”
Gelber, who said he’s spent more than half a million in legal fees fighting the unwanted dock, said he feels equally confident the county will weigh in his favor.
“I’d rather have my set of facts than theirs,” he said.
Miami-Dade is expected to formally weigh in during a Dec. 17 hearing. But a preliminary memo, issued Thursday by the county, says the permit was properly issued and properly suspended.
Now, the county’s Department of Environmental Resources Management wants to give Peralta six months to get his paperwork in order — potentially including letters of consent from the neighbors — before it formally decides what to do with the permit.
Peralta’s lawyer is confident they will prevail.
“Although it is my opinion that any additional permitting procedures are not necessary, and that DERM has more than sufficient information to grant final approval of the project as is, in light of the objection by the neighbor and in order to preserve neighborly relations and support the public interest, I believe that accepting DERM’s proposal is the most logical and reasonable approach to achieving a final resolution,” Zarco said.
An animated safety debate
The other prong of Gelber’s anti-dock pitch — beyond the issues with the signatures — is that he says the larger dock could lead to disaster for boaters, jetskiiers and paddleboarders who frequent the area.
To prove it, he brought in boating safety consultants. The report, authored by Florida International University academics Stephen P. Leatherman and his son, Stephen B. Leatherman, called the dock “a real threat” to boaters.
“The whole thing is ridiculous from a safety point of view,” Leatherman told the Herald. “It’s just an accident waiting to happen.”
Shakira appears to share the same concern, based on a letter her lawyer wrote to Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava about the dock issue.
“This vessel now dominated a significant portion of Shakira’s local waterway, blocking visibility, narrowing safe passage, and creating hazardous conditions for children and families who swim, paddleboard, or operate small boats in the area,” her lawyer wrote.
As a visual aid for their report, the Leathermans commissioned detailed animations of potential crashes: a jet ski swerving at top speed around the superyacht, only to collide with a speedboat; a paddleboarder hugging the shore, until they duck out around the yacht to find themselves suddenly face-to-face with a jetskiier.
In the preliminary memo, Miami-Dade appears to waive off those concerns too. The area is a “no wake zone,” so boaters are required to go slow, which in theory should prevent accidents.
“In processing this permit application, the Department’s analysis would not be predicated on the assumption that individuals would violate the law,” the memo reads.
Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated the notary admitted issued with the signature in a deposition. It was in an interrogatory.
Read the update: Plans for superyacht dock in Miami Beach sunk over permit fraud allegations
This story was originally published December 13, 2025 at 4:30 AM.
