Af­ter near­ly two decades of lit­i­ga­tion, a Flori­da ap­peals court has up­held a ju­ry ver­dict against Steve Fer­gu­son, find­ing him li­able for fraud, con­spir­a­cy, and vi­o­la­tions of Flori­da’s Civ­il RI­CO law over in­flat­ed con­tracts tied to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The Third Dis­trict Court of Ap­peal in Mi­a­mi af­firmed the 2022 judg­ment of $131,318,840.47 against Fer­gu­son, rul­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go had proven it suf­fered a do­mes­tic in­jury in Flori­da as a re­sult of the con­spir­a­cy.

Fer­gu­son, an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen who chaired Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny dur­ing the project, ar­gued the coun­try could not bring its claim un­der Flori­da’s Civ­il RI­CO Act be­cause any in­jury oc­curred abroad. His lawyers main­tained that the law did not ap­ply ex­trater­ri­to­ri­al­ly and re­quired proof of a “do­mes­tic in­jury,” which they said Trinidad and To­ba­go had not shown.

The State coun­tered that many of the wrong­ful acts—in­clud­ing in­flat­ed bids, kick­backs, mon­ey trans­fers, de­struc­tion of ev­i­dence, and meet­ings be­tween con­spir­a­tors—oc­curred in Flori­da. Com­pa­nies based in Mi­a­mi sub­mit­ted rigged bids, shell ac­counts in Mi­a­mi were used to move mil­lions of dol­lars, and U.S. bank loans tied to the project were de­plet­ed through the scheme.

The ap­peals court held that sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence sup­port­ed the ju­ry’s ver­dict. Judges point­ed to Fer­gu­son’s role in or­ches­trat­ing the scheme from Mi­a­mi, where he de­mand­ed kick­backs, fab­ri­cat­ed doc­u­ments, and used Flori­da com­pa­nies to push in­flat­ed con­tracts. Pay­ments were rout­ed through Mi­a­mi ac­counts, with pro­ceeds fun­nelled to shell com­pa­nies in the Ba­hamas and to Trinida­di­an of­fi­cials.

By show­ing that crit­i­cal parts of the con­spir­a­cy were car­ried out in Flori­da and that Trinidad and To­ba­go lost as­sets lo­cat­ed in Mi­a­mi, the State es­tab­lished the re­quired do­mes­tic in­jury. The court con­clud­ed that Flori­da had a le­git­i­mate in­ter­est in pro­vid­ing reme­dies for fraud car­ried out with­in its ju­ris­dic­tion.

The judg­ment—orig­i­nal­ly as­sessed at more than $32 mil­lion in dam­ages and tre­bled un­der Flori­da’s RI­CO law, with in­ter­est added—re­mains in force against Fer­gu­son.