Former Oakes' Farms exec working with feds gets court win ahead of sentencing

A federal judge has ruled against Naples-based Oakes Farms in its attempt to shift a lawsuit against a former executive who pleaded guilty to COVID fraud last year back to state courts.

The ruling came last week and is part of a complicated — and Shakespearean — set of cases that has one man facing prison while cooperating with federal authorities to allegedly tie his former bosses, including a well-known Southwest Florida political activist, to the crimes he acknowledged committing.

At the center of the legal battle is Steven Veneziano, a former high-level executive at Oakes Farms who last year pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The charges stemmed from a case involving a $5.18 million fraud against the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Coronavirus Food and Assistance Program.

Veneziano is scheduled to be sentenced March 23. Each count against him carries a potential 20-year sentence in federal prison.

Oakes Farms is a local agribusiness with just under 3,000 acres of farmland in Collier County, where it grows fruits and vegetables. It also owns the popular Seed-to-Table farm market on Immokalee Road in Naples.

The entities are owned by local businessman and political provocateur Alfie Oakes.

(On Tuesday, Naples CPA Thomas Unsworth pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud federal government programs by signing false certifications submitted to obtain COVID relief funds. It is not immediately clear in court papers that Oakes Farms is involved, though Alfie Oakes is mentioned in a report Gulfshore Business magazine. Unsworth’s attorney, Lee Hollander, did not respond to the Business Observer's a request for comment.)

Following the guilty pleas, Oakes Farms filed a lawsuit in Collier County against Veneziano alleging he stole $12.5 million in funds, equipment and assets. The case was ordered to be moved to federal court in December.

Shortly after the case was moved, Oakes Farms asked the federal judge now in charge to move it back to Collier, alleging Veneziano was still a Florida resident.

In a five-page order last week, U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell disagreed, writing that Veneziano and his wife had settled in California and intend to stay there. The case, Chappell wrote, will remain in the federal court system.

The ruling is just the start in a case that could grow in ways that would tie Oakes Farms and it’s chief Alfie Oakes to the crimes that may send Veneziano to prison.

In a sworn declaration filed in the federal case, Veneziano claims that one of the reasons he left Florida is because “I feared for my life and my family’s safety due to my cooperation with the government in the…fraud investigation, which involved many individuals, including Francis A. ‘Alfie’ Oakes II, the principal owner of Oakes Farms.”

Neither Oakes Farms’ attorney nor Alfie Oakes responded to a request for comment Tuesday.

A Department of Justice spokesperson writes in an email that the plea agreement reads that Veneziano “agree[d] to cooperate fully with the United States in the investigation and prosecution of other persons.”

“Beyond that, we are unable to confirm anything.”