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The St. Lucie-based judge said reputed Genovese associate Michael DaPuzzo, formerly of Bergen County, has been living in the Central Florida condo without registering as an occupant, in violation of association rules.
For a brief time, DaPuzzo even served as the condo association’s treasurer, until board members realized the unit was Bartucci’s and no leases were ever submitted.
Judge William J. Walsh Jr. said they then discovered that he was convicted out of Bergen County in February 1999 for criminal usury — loansharking.
Bartucci, the judge said, has refused to provide documentation showing that DaPuzzo is leasing the unit from him — at times ignoring the Dune Walk By the Ocean Condominium Association’s requests for official documentation and other times mocking them.
Without the paperwork, the judge said, DaPuzzo has to go.
Bartucci insists he and his friend are being unfairly singled out and harassed, which Walsh refuted. So on Friday they filed an appeal with a higher court.
DaPuzzo was living rent-free in a Hoboken unit owned by the chief — and valued at “well over $2,000 per month” — when Bartucci bought the Florida condo “almost sight unseen” on Oct. 31, 2000, the judge said.
“Mr. Bartucci has never lived in this unit but for two or three short visits in nine years,” the judge wrote in his 15-page decision.
In that time, Walsh wrote, “Bartucci has never provided any communication that Mr. DaPuzzo was a guest, a tenant, a co-owner of any other possible characterization.
“Mr. Bartucci has made a number of contrary characterizations as to the reason that he has provided DaPuzzo with a free place to live for over ten years,” he added.
The “most incredible,” the judge said, is that they were childhood friends in Hoboken. DaPuzzo is 67; Bartucci is 60.
“Perhaps this ‘free rent payment’ for Mr. DaPuzzo, a convicted felon with an alleged relationship to organized crime, is simply an embarrassment to Mr. Bartucci…. Perhaps Mr. DaPuzzo is attempting to avoid the tax consequences….,” the judge said. “Perhaps it is much more.
“For whatever reason — including the fact that Mr. DaPuzzo collects a disability payment and has an outstanding federal judgment against him — it is evident that both gentlemen desire to prevent any written record that may characterize Mr. DaPuzzo’s tenancy or occupancy.”
DaPuzzo moved into Unit 919 in November 2000 and has remained there since, the judge said. This allowed Bartucci to rent out the Hoboken unit “in an amount that exceeds the mortgage and fees associated with Unit 919 at Dune Walk.”
During a two-day trial, DaPuzzo admitted “representing himself as an employee,” the judge wrote, “but now alleges that he was being sarcastic.”
In both Hoboken and Florida, DaPuzzo was “living off the grid,” even though his Florida driver’s license lists his address as Unit 919 at Dune Walk, that he registered to vote under that address, and that he has paid the electrical bill there the past decade, the judge said.
He also invited friends over to use the pool, threatened board members and generally behaved in ways that are “not characteristics of a guest,” Walsh said.
Things came to a head in fall 2004, when hurricanes Frances and Jeanne devastated the development. DaPuzzo oversaw repairs for Bartucci, court papers say, and when an association manager audited the files to make sure all rules and regulations were followed, she “determined that the only unit without proper lease documentation” was 919, Walsh wrote.
Repeated requests were ignored, attorneys for the association told the judge. So the board sued.
In turn, the lawyers said, DaPuzzo told the manager that he intended “to make life miserable for the Association.”
“[E]ven defense counsel has conceded that Mr. DaPuzzo, acting on Mr. Bartucci’s behalf, was a ‘pain in the ass’,” Walsh wrote.
Walsh rejected the defendants’ claims that the association singled them out after years of not saying anything about the arrangement. Rather, the judge said, board members had been in the dark and didn’t discover the sweetheart deal until the post-hurricane audit.
Several hundred other occupants had submitted the necessary paperwork, Walsh said. Only one didn’t.
DaPuzzo and Bartucci were to do so this month, the judge ordered. He also ruled they should pay the association’s legal fees.
That decision is now in the hands of an appeals court.
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