Judge denies bail for Clearwater businessman charged in $100 million fraud

A federal magistrate denied bail for Leo Joseph Govoni Monday afternoon — hours after the 67-year-old Clearwater businessman was arrested and charged in an 18-count indictment alleging he stole more than $100 millions from a nonprofit that managed funds for people with special needs and disabilities.

Govoni, facing 260 years in federal prison, was to be moved to the Pinellas County Jail Monday evening and go back before the judge for a detention hearing in Tampa Thursday afternoon. That hearing will determine whether U.S. Magistrate Judge Amanda Arnold Sansone grants bail. 

Govoni, along with John Leo Witeck, a 60-year-old Tampa accountant who worked for him, were arrested Monday morning in connection with a scheme prosecutors allege involved stealing more than $100 million from, and ultimately bankrupting, a nonprofit organization in Clearwater that managed funds for vulnerable individuals with special needs and disabilities.

Sansone, in a nearly two-hour hearing, did not seem inclined to allow Govoni bail, citing the severity of the alleged crimes, the number of victims and his stonewalling a bankruptcy judge in a separate case.

Govoni sat mostly quiet at the front of the courtroom during the hearing, handcuffed and in the same Tampa Bay Lightning T-shirt and sweatpants marshals picked him up in that morning. He answered the judge’s questions with mostly one- or two-word answers as his daughter and wife looked on from the first row in the gallery.

Sansone’s reticence to grant bail was clear early in the hearing when Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon said his office was willing to agree to $1 million bail with “enhanced conditions.”

“I’m frankly surprised that you are not seeking detention,” Sansone said. She worried that Govoni may have squirreled money away, have access to a private plane or other means that could help him run off.

She also scheduled the hearing for a couple of days to allow at least some alleged victims in the case an opportunity to testify.

Govoni and Witeck are each facing one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, three counts of mail fraud, six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Govoni, who Gordon calls the “mastermind” and the “ringleader” of the scheme, is charged separately with one count of bank fraud, one count of illegal monetary transaction and one count of making a false bankruptcy declaration.

(Witek was granted a $500,000 bond Monday. He will be monitored and not allowed to leave the Middle District without permission.)

According to the indictment and court documents, Govoni founded the Center for Special Needs Trust Administration in 2000. The nonprofit was created to manage funds for individuals with disabilities and other special needs.

United States Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe said in an early afternoon press conference Monday that those funds often came in the form of lawsuit or insurance settlements and was put into the trust accounts in order for these people to get long-term care and have money to live off.

The trusts were created in a way that said would allow these people, the majority of who were severally disabled or injured, to continue to receive Medicaid and Social Security benefits, with the goal of the money in the trust to be used for long-term care, housing and other needs.

From June 2009 through May 2025, the time the indictment covers, Govoni, Witeck and co-conspirators allegedly “solicited, stole, and misappropriated” the funds and used them as a “slush fund to enrich themselves and others.”

Money in the trust fund, in one example of the methods prosecutors say Govoni used, was moved from the nonprofit to a business Govani owned named Boston Asset Management Inc., an investment advisory firm.

Prosecutors, in the indictment, allege Boston Asset had a single client: The Center for Special Needs Trust Administration.

“In this conspiracy,” the indictment says, the company managed some of the nonprofit’s assets “while also serving as a vehicle for Govoni and others to misappropriate CSNT funds for their own enrichment.”

Prosecutors allege Govoni and others “concealed their illegal activities through complex financial transactions and deceit, including sending fraudulent account statements with false balances to disabled victims and their families.”

Govoni, officials say, used the money to buy real estate, travel via private jet, make deposits in his personal bank accounts, pay debts and invest in Big Storm Brewing, a chain in Clearwater owned by his son, LJ Govoni.

The scheme may have continued but on Feb. 9, 2024, the nonprofit was forced into bankruptcy and in court filings reported that more than $100 million entrusted to it was missing.

Matthew Fodor, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Tampa field office, says the investigation has been complex and agents have been sifting through “a mountain of records.”

Just one of the accounts it discovered had about 108,000 pages of records.

In addition to the charges related to the trust fund, Govoni is also charged with bank fraud related to a $3 million mortgage refinance loan and the alleged laundering of $205,054 of fraud proceeds to pay off a home equity line of credit on his residence, prosecutors allege. He is also alleged to have made false declarations to the bankruptcy court related to the CSNT bankruptcy proceedings.

Kehoe said the jail time, if a judge were to sentence the men consecutive terms, would equal 265 years for Govoni and 220 years for Witeck. Most likely, if found guilty on all counts, the men would face decades in prison.

“The fraud alleged in this nationwide scheme is unfathomable,” Kehoe said Monday.