By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
It was the first epic South Florida scandal of the 21st Century and Adam Kidan was smack in the middle of it – a $14.5-million fraud wrapped in a congressional influence-peddling scandal inside a Mafia hit.
Fifteen years after serving just 31 months in federal prison for his part in that bold and ultimately deadly fraud, Kidan has reinvented himself. Today, he’s a self-described “business leader” and the CEO of the national staffing company Empire Workforce Solutions, a major Republican donor and acolyte and customer of Donald Trump.
Kidan, 60, is a member at Trump’s pricey private club and Palm Beach residence, Mar-a-Lago, where in February 2023 he staged his “fairytale” wedding ceremony to Brazilian-born Cristiani De Fatima Pereira, 23 years his junior. About 250 guests, including the former president and his wife, Melania, were entertained by the famed Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, video of the event shows.
The happy couple celebrated their first anniversary with another pricey bash at Mar-a-Lago in February.
Federal election records show that not long after the wedding, on April 27, 2023, Kidan cut the first of three $250,000 checks to the Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., via his company, Churchill Business Consultants of Lancaster, PA. The next two checks were dated Aug. 3, 2023 and Feb. 28, 2024 – bringing the total through June 30 to $750,000.
Using Churchill kept Kidan’s name out of those public records, and made it harder to trace the money back to him. Churchill isn’t listed in Pennsylvania corporate records. It was incorporated in New York in 2019 and lists an address in Ontario, CA. Two names are on the corporate paperwork: Kidan and another ex-con who died on Feb.14, 2024.
Kidan, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, also used Churchill to send another $50,000 Trump’s way on Nov. 7, 2023. The Patriot Legal Defense Fund was set up the previous July by former Trump campaign chief operating officer Michael Glassner and top Trump campaign adviser Susie Wiles, who both serve now as its directors. The Patriot fund is administered by Eric Robinson, who operates a Venice-based CPA firm with his partner, Republican State Sen. Joe Gruters, a close Trump ally who until last year was chairman of the Florida GOP.
KIDAN’S TOTAL GIVING TO TRUMP: $868,000
Kidan kicked in another $68,200 to Trump under his own name this election cycle. In May 2023, he sent $11,600 to the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and another $6,600 to Trump’s campaign. In April 2024, Kidan sent $50,000 to the TRUMP 47 Committee, a joint fundraising committee.
The grand total of Kidan’s contributions to Trump’s campaigns and committees through the end of June: $868,200. Kidan also co-hosted a fundraiser for Trump in April 2024 in Newtown, PA. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, tickets to attend ranged from $2,500 to $250,000.
Why give so much to Republican presidential candidate Trump? Kidan could be looking for a pardon, like the one Trump gave to his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Not only did the pardon keep Manafort out of prison on a variety of corruption charges, it also led the judge in his case to vacate $24.8 million in restitution assessed against him.
Kidan’s sentence in March 2006, following his guilty plea to wire fraud and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, included an order that he pay $21.7 million in restitution plus interest. An active lien for that amount, filed against Kidan by the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office, is on file with the Prothonotary’s Office in Lancaster, PA.
Kidan has been a hefty contributor to Republicans since 2017, but his giving took off in 2023-2024.
In addition to his contributions to Trump, Kidan has handed out $1.24 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee, whose goal is to elect Republicans to the House. The NRCC has gotten $276,400 so far this cycle.
The rest went largely to the campaigns and committees of a lineup of Republican Trumpsters he likes, including: Florida Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elena Salazar of Miami; Rep. Byron Donalds, Fort Myers, and Rep. Brian Mast, Port St. Lucie. Kidan has also contributed to Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and John Kennedy of Louisiana, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik and congressional wannabes Kari Lake, Bernie Moreno and Nicole Malliotakis.
But if money is an accurate measure, Kidan, the staffing company executive, adores Republican Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Lancaster, PA.
Kidan’s contributions to Smucker’s campaign, the Smucker Victory Committee and Smucker’s leadership PAC, JAM PAC, have so far totaled $103,000. Kidan’s business colleagues in an obscure lobbying organization called the Staffing Advisory Group have contributed additional thousands of dollars to Smucker.
“The group focuses on bringing awareness to the United States Congress regarding the challenges of the consistently changing labor market,” SAG’s website says. Its out-front tagline: “We educate Congress in making moves for our industry.”
Such generosity likely has something to do with the four-term congressman’s committee assignments. Smucker’s not only on the House Budget Committee, he’s on the House Ways and Means Committee and its subcommittees on Work & Welfare and Taxes. He’s also on the House Education & the Workforce Committee and its subcommittees on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions and Higher Education and Workforce Development.
KIDAN, JACK ABRAMOFF AND SUNCRUZ
The last time Kidan got mixed up with lobbyists and lobbying, he got into trouble with a capital T. That was with former pal, ex-super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Back in 2000, Kidan and Abramoff cooked up a scheme to buy SunCruz Casinos and its 11-ship fleet that offered gamblers “cruises to nowhere” where they could play blackjack, poker or slots in international waters three miles offshore.
SunCruz was founded by Greek immigrant Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis in 1994. Before that, he founded the popular Miami Subs sandwich shops.
In 1998, the U.S. had sued Boulis, contending he was ineligible to own the lucrative gambling ships because he wasn’t a citizen. In early 2000, Boulis agreed to divest himself in a deal with the government. The deal was kept confidential to allow Boulis to get the best price.
Kidan and Abramoff heard that SunCruz was for sale and ultimately cut a deal to buy it for $147.5 million in September 2000. They, of course, didn’t want to use any of their own money.
According to court records, the pair falsified documentation and information about themselves to convince a couple of lenders to hand over tens of millions of dollars in financing. When Gus Boulis threatened to call off the deal after Kidan and Abramoff sought a price reduction, they gave Boulis $20 million in promissory notes as a substitute for the cash equity contribution they’d told the lenders they had previously made.
In early December after the deal was done, a meeting between Boulis and Kidan at SunCruz’s Dania Beach office did not go well. Kidan later filed a police report in which he claimed Boulis attacked him by stabbing him in the neck with a pen. The Washington Post reported that police said at least one other witness stated that Kidan provoked Boulis by calling one of his top employees names and making threats. Boulis allegedly told Kidan to stop. Instead, Kidan repeated an insult and Boulis punched him.
Kidan, who has said he was afraid Boulis would harm him, contacted Gambino family associate Anthony Moscatiello and asked him to help. Kidan has said he wanted the word out that he had “connections.”
THE MURDER OF GUS BOULIS
Moscatiello introduced Kidan to Anthony Ferrari, a Miami thug who bragged about his mob connections.
Federal court records show Kidan paid $250,000 to Moscatiello, identified by authorities as a bookkeeper for the Gambino family, and Ferrari. The payments were said to have begun before Boulis’s murder and ended after it. Kidan has said the money was for catering and security services.
In January 2001, Boulis had sued Kidan and Abramoff, claiming they were trying to cheat him out of tens of millions of dollars owed in the SunCruz sale.
On the night of Feb. 6, 2001, Boulis, 51, was ambushed, shot and killed while driving on Fort Lauderdale’s Miami Road after leaving his office. Boulis managed to steer his BMW onto South Federal Highway and over the median. It came to rest after hitting a tree outside a Burger King – across the street from a Miami Subs shop. Screenshot from Miami Herald video and Miami
Kidan quickly began cooperating with police. Four years later, in 2005, Moscatiello, Ferrari and a third man, James “Pudgy” Fiorillo, were charged with murder.
Fiorillo’s car, a black Mustang, was used in the hit. He apparently knew nothing about the murder in advance, but served six years, before pleading guilty and cooperating. Authorities have identified the gunman as J.J. Gurino, who was shot to death in 2003 in a dispute with the owner of a Palm Beach delicatessen.
KIDAN AS STATE’S WITNESS
Moscatiello and Ferrari were later convicted separately of first-degree murder. Kidan was never charged and testified against them.
While Kidan had the motive, means and opportunity to have Boulis killed, and hired and paid the mobsters who did the killing while he was out of the country on a trip with Abramoff, Broward prosecutors chose not to charge him. Instead, they used Kidan as a witness.
Homicide prosecutors Brian Cavanaugh and Gregg Rossman believed Kidan’s denials of involvement and his claim that Moscatiello and Ferrari killed Boulis because they feared his efforts to retake control of SunCruz might interfere with their profitable arrangements with Kidan.
But Moscatiello’s defense lawyer, Fort Lauderdale’s David Bogenschutz, told Florida Bulldog in 2010 that Kidan was “the person who had the most to gain or lose by Gus Boulis’s death.” Nevertheless, the jury believed the prosecution.
But errors by the judge later led an appeals court to overturn the convictions of both Moscatiello and Ferrari in 2018.
Still, the court expressed skepticism about the state’s “theory of the case” – that Kidan hired Moscatiello and Ferrari to protect him from Boulis.
“For reasons somewhat unclear, Moscatiello determined that Boulis needed to be killed so that Moscatiello and Ferrari would not lose the protection payments from Kidan,” wrote Third District Court of Appeal Judge Martha Warner.
In January 2022, shortly before a scheduled retrial, the pair both accepted plea deals. Moscatiello, who served four years in prison following his first conviction, was returned to prison in March 2022, but was released less than six months later, state records show.
Ferrari was released a day after Moscatiello, but he’d been in custody since December 2013, records show.
Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty along with Kidan in the SunCruz case. He also pleaded guilty and fellow lobbyist Michael Scanlon, a former aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to bilking Indian owned casinos out of about $85 million in fees. More than 20 public officials were convicted during the Abramoff probe, including Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who pleaded guilty to bribery in 2006.
Abramoff served four years of a six year prison sentence. He and Kidan are jointly liable for the $21.7 million in restitution in the SunCruz case.
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