Outgoing State Attorney Bain drops all felony forgery charges against Amesty

Orange County’s top prosecutor abruptly dropped a criminal case Dec. 9 against former Republican state Rep. Carolina Amesty of Windermere, who was facing four felony charges for forgery.

Several news organizations initially reported that outgoing State Attorney Andrew Bain’s office didn’t explain why it dismissed charges against Amesty, a one-term lawmaker who lost her re-election bid last month for the District 45 seat to Gotha Democrat Leonard Spencer.

However, News 6 later reported that Bain’s office, in a statement to the organization, said Amesty took part in a pre-trial diversion program in exchange for dropping the charges.

“The defendant’s charges were non-violent, diversion-eligible offenses and the defendant was offered diversion given her lack of criminal history. The diversion terms required the defendant to complete a financial crimes course, a financial literacy course and 30 hours of community service. Once the diversion terms were completed, the State entered a nolle prosequi in the case,” the statement reads. Nolle prosequi means the prosecution has dropped charges. 

News 6 said that the diversion program was never listed on the docket for Amesty’s case.

Amesty was indicted in August by a grand jury for forgery, uttering a forgery, false acknowledgment or certification by a notary public and notarizing her own signature. Bain had presented evidence to a grand jury following an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

That investigation stemmed from Orlando Sentinel reporting that the lawmaker allegedly forged the signature of an employee of her family’s unaccredited Central Christian University on a document that she then notarized in September 2021. Amesty, who pleaded not guilty to the charges on Sept. 18, has always maintained her innocence. The newspaper also reported that the Windermere Republican had a trail of unpaid taxes and utility bills.

Florida Politics reported that Bain’s Office filed a brief Sunday afternoon that nullified any prosecution of Amesty on the four felony charges and that all bonds in the case were discharged Monday morning.

Bain, the chief prosecutor for the Ninth Judicial Circuit in Florida, representing Orange and Osceola counties and an independent, resoundingly lost his re-election bid last month against Democrat Monique Worrell, who won her former office back. Gov. Ron DeSantis had removed her from office in August 2023 and installed Bain. On Monday, Bain informed staff through an internal email, which immediately went public, that he would not cooperate with the transition process for the incoming Worrell administration, saying that the governor’s executive order suspending Worrell had to be rescinded first. A legal expert VoxPopuli consulted with said that the executive order expired with the election. 

Worrell issued a statement saying that Bain’s lack of cooperation was a "betrayal of democratic principles.”