Rep. Carolina Amesty indicted on four counts of felony forgery

Carolina Amesty, Republican State Rep. for District 45, turned herself in to the Orange County jail Thursday where she was booked on four felony forgery charges. Bond was set at $20,000, according to ClickOrlando.

Florida Politics first reported that Amesty was going to surrender today.

Amesty has been under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, according to the Orlando Sentinel, following the newspaper’s own investigations into unpaid taxes and utility bills and Amesty’s work with her family’s unaccredited Christian university, which included listing faculty that were not on staff and allegedly forging the signature of an employee on a document that she then notarized. The employee has said he worked at the family's K-12 school but not at the university. The Sentinel hired handwriting experts who attested that the signature on the notarized document was likely Amesty's.

Amesty has also been called to task for attempting to gain an educational exemption for her family’s $1.3 million five-bedroom Windermere home to avoid paying taxes on it, arguing that a university president’s home was integral to university business. The exemption for the home, in a gated community 15 miles from her family’s university, was denied, the Sentinel reported.

Amesty's taken heat for her involvement in attempting to divert $3 million of taxpayer money to a small Hispanic chamber of commerce in Wellington, which had donated to her 2022 campaign, for a storm water technology pilot program by falsely claiming the village of Key Biscayne had requested it. 

A grand jury indicted Amesty for forgery, uttering a forgery, false acknowledgment or certification by a notary public and notarizing her own signature, the Sentinel reported Thursday. All are third-degree felonies.

Amesty is not the first local politician accused of wrongdoing during this election cycle. Debbie Galvin, Republican Orange County State Committeewoman, filed fraudulent campaign documents, lying about her address on her Candidate Oath. And Cheryl "CJ" Blancett, who ran for State Senate in District 13 in the Republican primary, is facing two counts of felony theft for allegedly stealing nearly $48,000 from the homeowners association she was managing. Her trial starts Sept. 23.

Amesty is running for re-election against Democrat Amazon executive Leonard Spencer. District 45 includes Oakland, Winter Garden, Windermere, Horizon West and the Disney area into Osceola County.