Fort Lauderdale-based yacht broker Rick Obey has been charged with grand theft, a felony, in a case involving a Wellington man who says he paid Obey $4 million in 2019 but still hasn’t gotten his boat.
Obey, 54, was arrested on July 14 in Newark, N.J., after returning to the United States from a work-related trip abroad, according to a filing by his attorney in Broward Circuit Court on Wednesday asking Judge Edward Merrigan to set a bond for Obey’s release.
A probable-cause affidavit, filed on June 8 by Fort Lauderdale Detective Alejandro Arenas, states that Obey signed a contract on Feb. 1, 2019 to sell a 74-foot Sunseeker Sports Yacht and accepted four payments from the buyer, including a $998,398 payment requested days after Sunseeker, an English yacht builder, cancelled its dealer agreement with Obey’s company, Rick Obey and Associates.
The notice of cancellation disallowed Obey’s company from “representing, selling or using Sunseeker products and brand,” the affidavit says. Two weeks later, it adds, Obey’s assistant Kim Capasso sent the buyer an email requesting $998,398 “so funds can be sent to Sunseeker accordingly.”
The buyer’s name is redacted in the probable-cause affidavit. But the bond request by Obey’s attorney, James S. Benjamin, said the crime described in the affidavit is also the subject of a civil lawsuit that’s been ongoing for 4 1/2 years.
Kevin Turner, a Wellington developer, filed suit against Obey and Sunseeker in 2019 seeking the boat he purchased or the $4 million he spent on it. Obey at the time acknowledged that Turner paid the full $4 million purchase price, and his attorney Robert Goldman said Obey accepted the money believing he would be able to resolve his differences with Sunseeker.
In 2019, Goldman said that Obey’s conflict with Sunseeker involved a list of yacht purchasers and money that was being sent to pay for boats as they were being completed. But the arrangement unraveled when Sunseeker delayed taking responsibility for a catastrophic engine failure on one of its boat’s maiden voyage in March 2018, Obey said in a filing in the civil case.
Obey said that he instructed Sunseeker to apply money that he had sent to the company to complete Obey’s boat, but Sunseeker did not do so.
Reached by phone on Friday, Turner declined comment on Obey’s arrest.
The State Attorney’s Office filed a charge of first-degree grand theft on June 23.
Obey is being held on a no-bond fugitive warrant but could be released if the judge agrees to set bond. Benjamin has proposed setting a bond of $100,000. In his motion to set bond filed on Wednesday, Benjamin noted that Obey has been in the yacht brokerage business most of his life and has lived in South Florida since 1995.
“The defendant is desperate to get back to running his business,” Benjamin wrote, “as he is involved in countless brokerage deals for countless vessels, which the 25 brokers that work for and with him and his family depend on for their livelihood.”
A hearing is set for 9 a.m. Monday in Judge Merrigan’s courtroom in Fort Lauderdale.