Welcome to The Jackson

Nabeel and Faisal Ansari own and/or control over half of the units in our building. This has provided them with the voting power to do as they please. And boy, have they seemed to abuse that power.

The Ansari brothers led the effort to add a Right of First Refusal to our condominium declaration. Now whenever a unit goes on sale and the owner receives an offer, they can block the sale and purchase it themselves (which they have already done).

However before we dig into the details - we need to first go back in time a bit to see how it all started. Specifically, back to October 2018. During that month an election notice was mailed out. Dustin wasn't really in the picture at this time, and the Ansari brothers only owned 4 units. After receiving the notice, the Ansari brothers both declared that they would be running for election.

In February of 2019 they (unfortunately) both won seats and were elected to 1 year terms. Nobody really knew of their intentions at the time, and given they only owned 4 units at the time - no red flags were raised.

In March of 2020, Governor DeSantis had declared a COVID-19 state of emergency - and so the board decided to cancel the election that was supposed to be held that month. Conspicuously, no reasons were given as to why the elections couldn't simply be held online or via mail-in ballots.

In May of 2021, they scheduled another election... Or at least so we thought. It ended up being canceled at the last minute, and again they blamed it on COVID-19. Similarly, no reasons were given as to why the elections couldn't simply be held online or via mail-in ballots. They stated they were going to reschedule but surprise surprise, that never occurred. This repeated pattern gave the appearance that they were using the pandemic to their own advantage. As Winston Churchill once said - "Never let a good crisis go to waste".

On October 5th 2021, Dustin Nero entered our story. For some reason they really wanted him on the board of directors - as they decided on a whim to add him alongside Nabeel's wife. Just like that, amongst themselves, they declared it so. They completely disregarded the fact that in order to do this an election must be held (as per our bylaws). Even after being notified that this was against our bylaws, they still listed both Dustin Nero and Miljana Ansari as officers in our annual report, although they both "stepped down" from their positions shortly after being called out on this.

In April of 2022 they had another election scheduled. However when we notified them that Dustin Nero was ineligible to run for a board position as he didn't actually own any of his units, but rather his LLC did - they didn't quite react in the way we expected. Instead of removing him from the ballot however, Nabeel and Faisal canceled the election.

In July of 2022, the Ansari-led board amended our bylaws to allow LLCs - a move which would now allow Dustin Nero to now be eligible to hold a board position. In addition to amending the bylaws, they also updated our articles of incorporation to increase the term limits of board members from 1 year to 3 years.

A new election date was scheduled for December 7th, 2022. Finally! We finally had an election after almost four years of skipped elections! Except... it was pointless. The fact that they slowly accumulated 25+ units and passed the aforementioned amendments meant that nobody had a realistic chance to vote them out. They delayed long enough to successfully rig the system in their favor.

Between the futility of participating in the election and some confusing wording on the ballot instructions, the election concluded exactly how we expected it to. The Ansari brothers had re-elected themselves into board seats - except this time they had 3 year terms.

The overwhelming majority of units owned by Nabeel Ansari, Faisal Ansari, and Dustin Nero were being rented out on airbnb.com, vrbo.com and expedia.com. However there was one slight problem - this was prohibited in our condominium declaration. Only residential use of units was allowed.

This was a quick fix for the Ansari-led board of course. In June of 2021, they amended the declaration to allow non-residential use if it's "approved by the board". The passing of this amendment was made especially easy as Nabeel told residents that it would only be used to allow longer-term rentals, e.g. 6 months or more, which sounded reasonable enough at the time.

It turned out they pulled a fast one on us. As soon as the amendment was passed, Airbnb and VRBO listings for The Jackson started popping up with only 1-2 day minimums. Residents were quickly being disturbed by loud noises, parties, and trash - all being caused by these transient guests. All hope was not lost though... During the following month, July of 2021, the city of Orlando passed a new ordinance that prohibited any short-term rentals that were less than 30 days.

The excitement around the seemingly good news was short-lived however, since this did not seem to deter the Ansari-led board. They kept on knowingly violating city ordinance by renting out entire units with 1 or 2 day minimums. Over the next year or so, the numerous complaints from residents to both the board and the city of Orlando regarding these short-term rentals went mostly unheeded.

Beginning in October of 2021, the board added over $133,000 to our annual budget. The justification for this new addition to our budget was that we needed to pay for new doorman personnel - which they stated would be "responsible for accepting all packages being delivered for residents", and that when a package is received, the residents would "receive an email and a call stating a package is waiting for them". However, to date, no residents that we're aware of have received any package delivery notifications. It's been the opposite in fact, with the doorman personnel stating that they cannot hold packages for us.

Residents quickly began to suspect that this might just be an unnecessary expense for their personal gain. This was due in part to residents witnessing the doorman assisting Airbnb renters with their check-in process. On top of this, the board had disabled the door access codes for all residents except themselves.

In February of 2022, the board levied a special assessment of 1.3 million dollars on the residents of The Jackson. The reasoning provided was that we needed to "replenish our reserves".

This had led to some residents paying over $1,800 in monthly dues alone. We were essentially being forced to pay the equivalent of two mortgages at once! This increased monetary pressure subsequently forced more owners to sell, and guess who happened to be sitting on the sidelines ready and waiting to buy them up? Yep, the now notorious Ansari brothers. Dustin Nero was also actively emailing unit owners offering to buy their units with cash. We seemed to be on a fast track to converting the building into a giant Airbnb hotel.

Angry, a group of residents took it upon themselves to hire a lawyer and see what legal options they had to help remedy the situation. Initially, none of the options sounded too promising as they all had long timelines for getting any meaningful results.

One would think that the Ansari brothers would be smart enough to "keep a low profile", especially given the fact that the residents were getting upset and beginning to ask more questions - but one would be mistaken in that thinking. It seems that Nabeel in particular has made it his personal mission to antagonize the residents that live here. Not all residents mind you, seemingly just the ones who don't vote his way or don't turn a blind eye to him breaking the law.

For example, he's sent threatening texts to a resident who didn't vote the way he wanted them to during a meeting. Another notable example includes harassing a resident, poking fun at his hair color and using what said resident felt were offensive and borderline homophobic comments.

Another example includes Nabeel towing a resident's car out of their own space, for no good reason. Yet another example involves him damaging the unit below his, via a water leak from his unit, which seeped down into the unit below him causing damage. When asked about it he not only refused to help repair the damages but stated "Welcome to The Jackson we have lots of leaks!".

Yet another example includes Nabeel attempting to steal a parking spot that belonged to another resident. This was despite the fact that said resident had an estoppel indicating that he was indeed the legitimate owner, and that his ownership of the spot was already previously confirmed by the association.

And, yet, another example includes Nabeel antagonizing the residents of unit 408 every chance he gets. Take this Ring camera video of him smiling and waiving to their camera as he walks past, in an attempt to further get on their nerves. Or this video, where he calls the owner "Hija de puta, desgraciada", which translates to "motherf*cker".

Between Nabeel blatantly violating the law and bullying residents, it's galvanized us to dig deeper into the details regarding him and his family's background, as well as our financial statements. What we subsequently discovered was eye-opening to say the least.

We discovered that in January of 2021 the Ansari-led board motioned to move almost half a million dollars of our operating funds into Silver Gate Bank for "investment". There are couple of things that make this motion particularly concerning...

First, the funds being transferred were from a settlement we received years ago from the developer who built our condominium. It was a significant amount of money, one that could have been used to replenish our underfunded reserves (which once again was the justification for passing the special assessment).

Second, it turns out that the money didn't get transferred into "Silver Gate Bank", or at least not permanently. They transferred $200,000 over to an account with Interactive Brokers LLC which was subsequently used to invest in the stock market. Another $250,000 was transferred into the Gemini Exchange, where it was then used to buy Bitcoin. This turned out to be a ridiculously bad decision, and it's unknown whether any of the residents approved of this, let alone were made aware.

As you probably already know the markets crashed pretty hard in 2021, especially the cryptocurrency market. Most of us had no idea that our money was being invested so recklessly of course. By the time we found out, we had lost almost half of our original developer settlement money.

Even worse, they essentially kept these losses hidden from us by not reporting them to our property management company - FirstService Residential (who manages our budget). Our monthly financial statements continued to falsely state that no money had been lost. What's also a bit concerning is that apparently our LCAM only has access to some of our bank accounts, while Nabeel and/or Faisal have access to the rest.

They also spent almost $150,000 remodeling our common areas when they had no need of remodeling. The prevailing hypothesis here is that it was done to make their Airbnb rental listings more appealing. On top of that, we also discovered that the company who cleans our condominium - "Prime Properties International, LLC" - is owned by Nabeel. He's essentially paying himself for services needed by our condominium which seems like a huge conflict of interest.

Speaking of LLCs, Nabeel and Faisal Ansari own and/or has owned over 70 different LLCs... Why do they need so many shell companies?

There's likely additional highly-questionable financial activity occurring here at The Jackson but it's been tough to prove, as we want to make sure we have the appropriate evidence to avoid making any false claims. So we were starting to get desperate in our quest to find out exactly what was happening with our money.

With the help of our lawyer, we filed a derivative demand requesting the aforementioned documents. Alongside the derivative demand we also filed a petition with the Department of Business and Professional Regulations (DBRP), and they've agreed to step in as an arbitrator. The DBPR has sent a demand to the association to hand over the requested documents, however as of the time of this writing there has been no resolution to the petition.

We also reached out to the Florida Condo Ombudsman to provide us with an election monitor, to ensure that any elections are conducted fairly (albeit even though they are rarely held and we have no chance of winning). We plan out reaching out again soon to the Ombudsman for help with additional matters.

To combat the short-term rentals we started handing out business cards, with a message urging the renters to scan the QR code on the back. This QR code would lead them to a web page where we briefly explained our situation, and offered cash rewards for them providing a digital receipt for their stay here. The goal here was to gather enough evidence for the city of Orlando to take action. We also reached out to the Airbnb Community Support Team to notify them of these infractions.

After providing adequate evidence, the city of Orlando's code enforcement officers were finally able to step in and force the Ansari brothers, along with Dustin Nero, to take down most of the airbnb.com and vrbo.com listings. It was a huge relief when we started seeing the code enforcement signs posted outside our building. However that didn't last very long, as not even a couple weeks later the listings started popping back up again. It's starting to feel like we're playing a game of "Whac-A-Mole" here.

One resident decided to reach out to Representative Anna V. Eskamani from the Florida House of Representatives, who has been gracious enough to offer assistance, and thus far her office has been lending help when and where they can. Other residents have sent complaints to the Florida State Attorney, FBI, IRS, and the Office of the Inspector General - to see if any of those agencies can step in and somehow help out as well.

We've also tried reaching out to our property management company, FirstService Residential, but to date they have not stepped in to intervene nor offer any assistance.

Additionally, we've also reached out to local media outlets who have been very supportive to our cause. If you have time, please check out the Orlando Sentinel Article and WFTV story which both describe our situation here.

In November of 2022 the board attempted to hold a budget meeting to increase our monthly dues, again. Starting in 2023, residents would now be facing up to $2,200 per month in association-related fees! The Ansari-led board's justification for this increase was that they (a) needed to make up for their overspending of operating funds on items that were outside of the 2022 budget, and (b) deciding that they wanted to remodel the front of the building. The former is not the residents' fault, and the latter is definitely not what we want. Especially since we suspected that it was simply to impress their Airbnb guests.

Additionally, the proposed 2023 budget had some questionable items on it. Specifically:

• Our "Elevator Maintenance" budget increased from $0 per year to $6,174 per year.
• Our "HVAC Parts and Repairs" budget increased from $500 per year to $5,324 per year.
• Our "Custodial Supplies" budget increased from $4,800 per year to $7,172 per year (note that we suspect these supplies are being used to clean Airbnb units).
• Our "Door Maintenance" budget increased from $500 per year to $8,258 per year.
• Our "Doorman" budget increased from $133,000 per year to $210,000 per year.
• Our "Landscaping" budget (i.e. for remodeling the front of the building) increased from $1,452 per year to $120,000 per year.

Overall our total expenses would have more than doubled in 2023 from $423,001 per year to $946,912 per year. Because of this, we decided to send out a formal letter of protest regarding the proposed budget. Luckily this seems to have made an impact as the board canceled the meeting... And by "canceled" we mean they simply didn't show up.

The board held a meeting the following week, and motioned to continue with the remodeling of the front of the building despite the fact that there was no budget increase for it. They stated they were going to fund this unnecessary expense using our reserve funds, the very same funds they stated were low and necessitated the passing of the special assessment.

To make matters even worse, they are now planning to add a gym and a pool! At this rate we'll never replenish our reserves, and forever be forced to pay extremely high monthly fees to the association.

We had already started digging more into the details and history of our board members, but the defamation lawsuit filed by the board president (Nabeel Ansari) has encouraged even more intense scrutiny. Since the Ansari family claims to be "investors" running a "business" here at the Jackson - it's only fair to see what their track record is in regards to their previous business ventures.

We've since discovered that the Ansari family is an... interesting one. They own quite a few businesses, the most well-known being Cicis Pizza. They've also had multiple lawsuits filed against them, including one from Disney where they were accused of selling fake park tickets.

Another interesting example is Nabeel Ansari's applying for and receiving $3.5 million dollars in PPP funding for his Cicis Pizza franchise. We've been wondering there they might have acquired the capital required to buy so many units here at The Jackson, and while obviously we cannot in good faith state this is how they did - it does naturally raise some eyebrows. Additionally, it's also plausible that this loan was used for multiple franchise locations, however there's only one location listed on the Federal Pay website.

This was estimated to have "saved 319 jobs" for a total payroll of "7.2 million dollars" in 2020, and "saved 237 jobs" for a total payroll of "9.6 million dollars" in 2021. This obviously doesn't quite... add up. The breakdown on the Federal Pay website speaks for itself:

Another example, this one particularly unethical and exploitative, involves this gas station they own, where they are shamelessly price gouging Orlando residents and visitors. We need not say more, as the Google reviews, Yelp reviews, and Facebook reviews speak for themselves:

... They received so many complaints in fact, that they were forced to debrand from a "Shell" gas station, to a "US Petrol" gas station.

Another example is drdisabled.com, where they are apparently scamming handicap people. Once again, don't take our word for it, the reviews speak for themselves:

Yet another example is a company they own (or at least used to own) called MOOSH, where they apparently scammed owners of emotional support animals. They were reportedly charging to send out fake ESA letters.

Another interesting example is their failure to repay back loans. For example, take their failure to repay a loan from American Express, which resulted in a court-ordered judgment for damages in the amount of $289,662.20, as well as their failure to repay a loan to Mr. Peter Wiest, leading to a final judgment of $9,169,918.45.

Yet another interesting example is some of the expenditures made using association funds. Nabeel Ansari has purchased and received reimbursement for buying food not once, not twice, but at least three times.

Note that our general ledger shows 32 payments made directly to Nabeel Ansari, and these findings are from just the receipts we received for only 5 of those payments. It wouldn't be surprising to find out that this was just the tip of the iceberg - should we ever get them to cough up the remaining receipts.

We are gearing up to file a lawsuit of our own against the board of directors, as we feel that we have no other choice at this point. It will be expensive, it will time-consuming, and it will be stressful... but we can't just give up and let them roll all over us.

On March 9th, 2023, our Board sent out a notice about an upcoming board meeting where they planned to levy another special assessment for $500,000.

We were of course both frustrated and worried at first, but quickly relieved when we found out they couldn't pass it. This was because all of the board members except Nabeel and Faisal Ansari had stepped down by now. Since there were five board positions and only two were filled - they would not have "quorum" - i.e. a majority needed to pass any motions, including this special assessment.

Our relief was short-lived however, as three days before the board meeting where the special assessment vote would take place, the board appointed a new member...

Contrary to the previously-emailed notice for the special assessment meeting - we did not receive any emails for this one. We only (luckly) found out since we saw a notice for it in the downstairs lobby. By only posting a physical notice a few days before the meeting was to take place, we suspected that they did not want us to know about the meeting, let alone to show up and record the entire thing.

The newly appointed board member, named "Nayda Estevez", was not present for her own appointment. Additionally, none of us had ever heard about her before, as she doesn't live in the building nor own any units here. According to the board, she's works for one of their many LLCs. We tried looking up the LLC they claimed she worked for, but could not find any evidence of her being an authorized representative of said LLC, nor did the Board bother to provide any evidence in support thereof.

The next day, on March 22nd, aka two days before the motion to pass a new special assessment, the board put all of their units up for sale. This obviously both greatly concerns and worries us, as we're going to be forced to immediately fork over thousands of dollars to a board that may potentially exit The Jackson soon.

Two days later, on March 24th, the board successfully passed the motion to levy a new $500,000 special assessment, due within 30 days (which comes out to around a 7 - 13k charge per owner), to purchase a unit owned by Donna Nero, the mother of Dustin Nero (a former board member), in order to convert it into a gym that nobody wants.

For additional context, Dustin Nero owned around 12 units. Earlier this year he sold all of them to Nabeel Ansari, except for one. Unit 201, i.e. the unit the board is forcing us to buy with association funds.

To add insult to injury, the board did not allow any comments or questions until after they voted. Not only that, but they also motioned to seek a $500,000 loan on top of the $500,000 special assessment, without bothering to explain why beforehand.

Our worries were evern further compounded by the fact that the previous $1.3 million dollar special assessment was not being used for its intended purpose... The board stated that it was needed to "replenish our reserves", but they kept withdrawing funds from our reserve account afterwards, to use on unnecessary spending such as remodeling the lobby. So how can we be sure this one won't end up with the same fate?

It's interesting to note that Dustin Nero previously sent a Cease and Desist letter in regards to this website. In that letter he finds issue with being portrayed as "working in tandem with the Ansaris" (amongst other complaints), which is honestly getting harder to believe, given the above.

The silver lining is that luckily WFTV Channel 9 news was present to record the entire thing... So a very, very interesting segment about this should be airing soon.

Update: On May 1st, the board granted a 60-day extension to pay the special assessment. While we're not happy about still having to pay, since a lot of us simply cannot afford it, the extra breathing room being granted was admittedly still appreciated.

Update: Our excitement about the extension was short-lived, as on May 2nd, the very next day - the board motioned to increase our monthly dues (again) by roughly 30%. We're slowly being bled dry financially over here.

On January 18, 2023, Nabeel Ansari, the board president, first noticed a security camera located above one of our units. He quickly had a warning sent out demanding that it be removed, even though it had been installed there for years by a previous owner. After being questioned about the legitimacy of this demand, on February 15 the warning was "revoked", and the matter was dropped... Or at least so we thought.

On March 10, seemingly on a whim and without warning, Nabeel had that very same security camera ripped out and stolen. According to the property manager and association attorney, this was done without their approval. It was a rogue decision of sorts.

If you're wondering how we have video of a security camera being removed from a different angle, well, that's because that unit had two cameras. The remaining camera (which is a Ring doorbell camera) is going to be coming down soon as well apparently. On May 5, a new warning was sent out for units that have a Ring doorbell camera installed. One can only hope and pray that none of these get stolen as well.

Needless to say, doorbell cameras are a commonplace amongst residential units nowadays, and are there to provide residents with a sense of security. There is absolutely no legitimate reason to demand their removal. We suspect that yet again, this is retaliation by the board for us speaking out against them - both on this website and in the media. We now no longer feel secure in our homes.

Believe it or not this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are literally dozens of additional complaints, incidents, evidence of suspicious activity, etc etc - that aren't listed here for the sake of brevity. In order to help keep the story interesting, and keep you (the reader) engaged, this website only contains some of the more egregious examples.

We're trying to raise awareness about our situation in order to hopefully attract more outside assistance. Assistance that might be able to help us pressure the Ansari brothers into finally stepping down from the board, and abandoning their plans for a hostile condo takeover. The ending to our story is unknown and has yet to be written, but our fingers are crossed that the ending is a positive one, where we finally get to live in peace.