North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo faces allegations he does not live in city he represents
MIAMI - North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo faces allegations he no longer lives in the city he represents and has since 2018.
CBS4 obtained a copy of a complaint regarding this filed on December 17th last year by a resident to Miami-Dade's Commission on Ethics and Public Trust. Allegations that lead us to two questions, where's his primary residence, and did he commit voter fraud in this past election?
"I encourage all of you to keep your faith and know your mayor is your mayor," said DeFillipo at the city's last commission meeting held on December 20th.
Mayor DeFillipo maintains he lives in North Miami Beach. He offered his defense after commissioner McKenzie Fleurimond brought to light allegations from a resident that the mayor lives outside the city.
"Deserve to know that the elected officials serving them based on the charter are residents of the city of North Miami Beach," said Fleurimond to CBS4.
The city charter says elected officials must "always be and remain bona fide residents" of North Miami Beach.
"My address has always been in North Miami Beach," said DeFillipo at that meeting. "My residency has always been in North Miami Beach, without question. And if you want to question it, the clerk is there and has all my information."
"If any elected official does not live in the city, including our mayor, it's an automatic vacating of that seat," stated Fleurimond.
So we went digging in voting and property records and found possible red flags.
December 2021 Mayor Anthony DeFillipo sold his family home of 14 years in North Miami Beach. Voting records show he used that address to vote three times in 2022. But it appears he no longer lived there. That may be a problem because you can only cast a vote in a precinct or district from your legal residence in which you are registered.
So we asked lawyer David Weinstein if that could be a potential criminal offense.
"Did the voter intend to vote either unlawfully or in a location where they should not have been voting, casting a second ballot, and all of that requires intent on the part of the person who cast their vote," said Weinstein.
Combing through records, we found DeFillipo re-registered his voting address last month in a different North Miami Beach precinct. It's registered to a one-bedroom 830-square-foot condo in the Eastern Shores neighborhood in precinct 124.
Another question arises: Where has the mayor been living with his family of four since December 2021? Or did his family move, and he stayed behind at Eastern Shores?
We kept searching to find out.
Last year, DeFillipo owned two homes in Davie. He and his wife sold a condo in Davie in June 2022. And the photos on realtor.com show a home well-lived in by a family. We saw closets full of clothes, what appeared to be his wedding photo, and what seemed to be him without a shirt in a reflection of a picture in front of a microwave.
Then in July, online property records show his family purchased a 1.2 million dollar home in a different neighborhood in Davie.
This week we went to the gate's callbox, and a name matching his name appeared. We called multiple numbers, sent emails, reaching out to the mayor to explain.
We are not alone in searching for an explanation.
North Dade Neighbors Alliance is a non-profit comprised of concerned community members. The founder claimed not to be politically motivated. He told CBS4 the group hired a law firm to investigate the matter. The firm hired Countywide Investigations.
Photos from what they say was a weeks-long investigation, beginning in late November, appear to show the mayor at a home in Davie he purchased with his wife.
"Each and every time we drove by, the wife's vehicle was there," said the lead private investigator working the case, Kennedy Rosario. "We did see the mayor was living there with his family."
Rosario said they set up a stationary video camera outside the gated community from December 6th through the 22nd, tracking what they believed was the mayor's vehicle entering the neighborhood late at night and leaving the next day numerous times.
"Enough days gave us the conclusion he was living there," said Rosario.
And investigators told CBS4 they have yet to see the mayor's vehicle during their surveillance efforts at Eastern Shores, where he's registered to vote. CBS4 was unable to independently verify the private investigators' surveillance findings.
The mayor responded to our questions in an email: "I made a clear and factual public statement as to my residency at the last commission meeting on December 20th."
The City Clerk's office provided an email from December 21st, 2021. The city clerk writes the mayor wanted to update his records to reflect he changed his residency to the condo at Eastern Shores.
The mayor did not clarify the discrepancies when asked for comment.
