Attorneys allege Tampa bank is complicit in missing $100 million fraud scheme

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A big development in the effort to recover $100 million missing from a local special needs trust. 8 On Your Side reveals that attorneys are now going after a local bank.

Leo Govoni, 67, and his accountant John Witeck, 60, were indicted in June for a wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering scheme that spanned 15 years.

According a complaint filed Thursday, the Center for Special Needs Trust Administration funneled stolen money through an elaborate network of accounts held at American Momentum Bank.

The complaint continued to read that the bank was willing to cater to Govoni to keep him happy, "willfully supporting the Center's breaches of fiduciary duty."

The missing money has left disabled families with nothing left to provide for their future care. Attorneys are calling it "a classic Ponzi-scheme."

The class action lawsuit represents 6,000 victims nationwide who entrusted their money at the center for safekeeping between 2009 and 2024. These victims include permanently disabled children, victims of catastrophic injuries and medical malpractice, and people suffering from severe mental illnesses.

The center deposited their funds at American Momentum Bank for safekeeping, specifically at the bank's Urban Centre Branch on West Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa.

The complaint alleged, "Instead of guarding these essential funds that the trust beneficiaries rely on for their basic needs, the Bank facilitated a decade-long fraud and theft scheme by which Leo Govoni, former director of the Center, aided by others, siphoned $100,000,000 from the special needs trust accounts to line his own pockets."

Attorneys alleged that this then enabled Govoni "to fund his other business ventures and buy, among other things, real estate, a private jet, and box seats to the Kentucky Derby and the Tampa Bay Lightning."

Court records said, "the Bank permitted the Center to affix the Bank logo to false account statements sent to beneficiaries; allowed wires out of Center accounts on the word of Govoni's cronies, who had no authority to move Center funds; and charged thousands upon thousands of dollars of administrative fees for all of Govoni's various business accounts to the Center.

Attorneys said the bank enabled Govoni's depletion of special needs trust money — all while center employees scrambled to cover the costs of the victims' housing and medical care. The center then filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in February 2024.

The attorneys alleged Govoni conducted his theft through American Momentum Bank and maintained more than 140 accounts, including for the center and his own businesses.

The signers included a combination of Govoni, center co-founder John Stanton, and Govoni's children, LJ Govoni and Caitlin Govoni Janicki.

When 8 On Your Side first reported the Center's bankruptcy, we were told a letter was discovered.

The unsigned letter dated from November 2021, according to the bankruptcy filing, was left behind by Govoni's daughter, Caitlin Janicki, following her resignation in April 2022. She had been serving as the vice president. The center said it doesn't know why Janicki left, but it caused everything to begin unraveling.

8 On Your Side also has told you Govoni and his son, LJ Govoni, previously ran Big Storm's five breweries and taprooms, which closed one by one and faced evictions and lawsuits.

In a lawsuit filed in June, an investor alleged the two used their brewery as a front to commit financial fraud and theft.

8 On Your Side investigator Brittany Muller reached out to three attorneys representing American Momentum Bank and we have not yet heard back.

All of this new information begs the question: Will we be seeing more criminal indictments in this case and when? That will be up to federal prosecutors. The U.S Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida criminally charged Govoni and Witeck back in June, and in that indictment, it said in addition to those two, as well as "others known and unknown to the grand jury," so in this case, they are investigating everyone that could be involved.