Jury awards investor $14M in case against PBC development partners

Moises Franco, an Aventura real estate investor who put $1 million into Pine Run Developers in 2003 and 2004, has been awarded more than $14 million by a Miami-Dade jury, which said he was cheated out of his promised returns by a conspiracy engineered by his partners in the deal. Franco’s investment gave him a 35 percent interest in the firm, which owned a 9.88-acre parcel in Palm Beach County on which it planned to build 77 townhouses. Franco was promised a $4.5 million return on his investment within two years, but instead, the jury found that his partners stole $1.47 million from the company’s bank accounts. The judgment awards Franco $2 million in civil theft damages, which the law stipulates must be tripled, in addition to $2.7 million in legal fees and interest and another $2.7 million in a related case. [Miami Herald]