The founders of Magic Development promised to bring high design, sexy architecture and a world-famous luxury brand to Kissimmee’s W192 corridor. But in the end, it was a magic show, based on illusion and sleight of hand.
This is the story of developers who collected $87 million in deposits from hundreds of investors, but six years later have closed on just 18 units.
Riding a wave of success from the sell-outs of their first two Magic Village vacation home resorts, founders Rodrigo Cunha and Luis Sinelli unveiled their latest venture at a splashy poolside cocktail party in 2016 to introduce their architecture team from Pininfarina, the renowned Italian design firm behind luxury sports cars like Ferrari and Maserati. Cunha, the smooth-talking CEO from Brazil, had spent six months courting Paulo Pininfarina before he agreed to lend his name and talents to the project, dubbed Magic Place by Pininfarina.
To call the project ambitious would be an understatement. The initial $1.7 billion plan for Magic Place by Pininfarina envisioned 1,850 condo resort units spread among five residential buildings, each with a pair of soaring towers. Plans also included a luxury hotel and 250,000 square feet of retail, restaurants and offices. Osceola County had never seen anything like this before.
It still hasn’t. GrowthSpotter examined hundreds of court documents from dozens of lawsuits involving the company, reviewed financial records and interviewed former employees and brokers to explain how a project that seemed destined for success went off the rails.
The developer hired three different retail-focused brokerages to sign luxury brands for Magic Place, but none were successful. (Rendering by Pininfarina)
While the founders dropped grandiose announcements, portraying themselves as the epitome of success, the company was drowning in debt, facing liens from dozens of construction companies and subcontractors, records show. Cunha and Sinelli, who took a less visible role than his gregarious partner, had siphoned off millions of dollars from lenders and investors who had made deposits for the vacation homes in Magic Village 1 to subsidize their own extravagant lifestyle, according to a lawsuit filed by the current owner of the company. Between them, the two had created dozens of limited liability companies, including LS Toys LLC and RGC Toys LLC, and receipts showed they transferred funds from Magic Development to buy two planes, a yacht, jet skis, and even a private island in the Bahamas — all claimed as business expenses.
The same lawsuit alleged that Magic Development used deposits escrowed for their Magic Village 2 resort to pay off debts incurred during the construction of Magic Village 1. Nevertheless, in 2017, its founders doubled down on the Magic Place concept, spending another $20 million to buy 364 acres immediately south of the original Magic Place tract. There, they promised to build a third Magic Village resort community — the largest to date — also incorporating Pininfarina designs and branding.
The third Magic Village townhouse development was designed by Pininfarina and carries the luxury Italian brand. (Rendering by Pininfarina)
“We wanted it to be as sexy as Magic Place, so we went to the same guys,” Cunha said at the time. “We have a good relationship with Paolo Pininfarina. We told him our vision, and he said, ‘We’re in.’”
All of the Magic Village resorts featured an industrial chic aesthetic and luxury interior package from Design 407 Concept that was specifically curated to appeal to wealthy South American, Mexican and Chinese buyers. The townhomes sold for between $460,000 and $570,000, plus the required furniture package that could go for another $60,000 to $100,000.
Magic Development had acquired the 87-acre property for Magic Place, just east of Celebration and Old Town, in 2014 for $8.3 million. The second acquisition gave Magic a total of 250 buildable acres on the tourism corridor, just east of Celebration and Old Town and minutes from the Disney parks. It was an audacious move. Magic Development had outbid other developers, including Park Square Homes, for the property. Cunha boldly declared that “Magic Place will become Magic City.”
Even though Magic Village 2 was still under construction and tight on funds, Magic Development began sales for Magic Village 3 in late 2017. “We decided to launch another development because we’re selling 10 units a month,” Cunha said at the time. “Our sales staff needs to have something to sell.”
But they really needed cash, so the company brought in a new partner, José Augusto Schincariol, whose $30 million investment bought him a 40% share of the newly formed “Magic Companies Group LLC,” a parent company that would manage the existing assets and develop the Magic Place and Magic Village 3 projects. Schincariol and his two siblings had inherited half of Brazil’s largest beer company from their father and sold it for $1.2 billion to Japanese beverage titan Kirin.
Pininfarina also designed the Magic Village 3 townhomes. The project is approved for over 450 townhomes, but only 76 have been constructed. (Courtesy of Magic Development)
The Magic Village townhomes were sold with a furniture and design package curated specifically to appeal to wealthy South American investors and tourists. Each unit featured natural wood finishes and upholstered leather furnishings. (Courtesy of Magic Development)
The primary suites were designed with a sitting room and an aviator-style desk, similar to the one CEO Rodrigo Cunha used in his own office at the Magic Development headquarters. (Courtesy of Magic Development)
Magic Development avoided using themed kids’ rooms at its resorts, instead opting for the same industrial chic finishes. (Courtesy of Magic Development)
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Pininfarina also designed the Magic Village 3 townhomes. The project is approved for over 450 townhomes, but only 76 have been constructed. (Courtesy of Magic Development)
Magic Village 3 was approved for 458 townhomes and a clubhouse with 25,000 square feet of flex meeting space, along with a full-service restaurant, fitness center, and resort amenities. During that time, Schincariol had paid each of the partners an additional $5 million to gain majority control of Magic Companies Group, according to financial documents submitted in court.
But progress on Magic Place soon stalled, amid indications the partners had an unrealistic expectation of what type of retail and accommodations the Kissimmee market could support. They were competing with another massive resort project just down the road at Margaritaville, but Magic Development wanted its project to be everything the competition wasn’t. If Margaritaville was flip-flops, Magic Place would be Ferragamos.
“It was a very, very ambitious proposal, because they were talking about all these massive towers on 192,” said DT Minich, president and CEO of Experience Kissimmee. But he noted: “The other projects they’ve done that are open and operational are very successful, especially with the Brazilian market.”
SRS Real Estate’s Jason Kaiser, who was hired early on to sign luxury retailers to Magic Place, told GrowthSpotter those brands were reluctant to locate on W192, a corridor associated with cheap motels and tacky gift shops. “They came to me and they had a vision plan, and they threw Tiffany’s out there,” Kaiser said. “I said Millenia’s got Tiffany’s. I don’t see Tiffany’s coming down here — Kissimmee’s a different market. The kind of deals I was bringing them were Texas Roadhouse and Outback — real middle America — and they weren’t interested in that.”
John Crossman, owner of CrossMarc Services, was the second retail broker to work on Magic Place and had the same problem. “I could not bring them what they wanted,” he said. “Retail follows. It’s important to understand what’s in the existing market.”
So Cunha decided to create his own retail anchor. In 2018, he announced plans for a 32,000-square-foot food hall called Gourmet Market at Magic Place. With four full-service restaurants, 18 stalls, and seating for 400, it would have been the largest food hall in the Orlando market. Magic Companies Group would move its corporate offices from downtown Orlando to the second floor of the Gourmet Market. He sent the design team to Portugal for inspiration and told his staff to start recruiting vendors.
Magic Development CEO Rodrigo Cunha announced plans for a 30,000-square-foot food hall called Gourmet Market at Magic Place. (Courtesy of Magic Development)
Crossman advised against the strategy. “Food halls don’t have a good record of being profitable, and they’re pretty risky,” he said.
After more than a year of work and planning, the team filed a site development plan with the county for the food hall. The permit was in the review process when the COVID pandemic hit. Three months into the shutdown, Cunha pulled the plug on the project and, apparently, on the Magic Place vision.
“We kept waiting for them,” Minich recalled. “They cleared all the ground and everything over there on 192, and we just kept waiting and waiting. We heard various renditions of what was happening and what was going to happen. And it just kept dragging out and dragging on, with no action.”
Later that year, the company scrapped the Pininfarina tower concept and filed a new concept plan that would have subdivided the site into multiple parcels to accommodate nearly a dozen restaurants, three hotels, a movie theater, and 42,000 square feet of retail. The plan from Daly Design Group carved out 22 acres between the retail and Magic Village 3 for an apartment complex.
But behind the scenes, the partners disagreed on how to proceed, court records show. Cunha wanted to sell the company’s real estate assets, including portions of Magic Place, and use the capital to develop Magic Village 3, but Schincariol and Sinelli refused.
In October of that year, Cunha sued for judicial dissolution of the company, explaining the deadlock in his complaint. He formally resigned in January 2021 after negotiating a settlement that would pay him an exit package of $13.55 million, comprising an initial cash payment of $4 million, followed by two annual payments of $2 million, and the proceeds from the sale of nine vacation homes in Magic Village 2.
When the next installments were due in January 2022 and 2023, Schincariol refused to pay. He accused Cunha and Sinelli of using his investment to meet the debts for Magic Village 2 and claimed to have recently discovered financial mismanagement during the construction of Magic Village 1.
Cunha sued again, and Schincariol countersued both Cunha and Sinelli, spelling out in court documents the extent of the alleged fraud. He said the pair lied about the company’s financial standing and cash flow to get him to agree to pay each of the partners a $100,000 monthly disbursement, in addition to their salaries. By this time, Sinelli had also resigned from the company, accepting a $1 million exit package and leaving Schincariol as the sole owner.
Schincariol hired distinguished economist Dr. Henry Fishkind to examine the company’s books and testify as an expert witness. Fishkind said that between 2018 and 2022, Magic Companies had collected over $87 million in deposits for vacation homes in Magic Village 3, but that more than half of the escrowed funds appeared to be “wrongly diverted from MV3.”
“There is a discrepancy on the balance sheets for the companies for construction spending, compared to the actual construction draw requests,” Fishkind wrote in his report. “The books show $37.6 million of construction installed compared to the construction draws of $13.3 million. The discrepancy is $23.4 million.”
Cunha didn’t deny the past mismanagement but argued in court filings that the alleged fraud was “barred by the statute of limitations.” Nor did he deny the $100,000 monthly disbursements, which were documented in the minutes of the company’s quarterly board meetings. Instead, when the matter went to trial last November, Cunha presented evidence, including emails and signed documents, showing Schincariol was aware of the company’s finances and had authorized the distributions.
Schincariol’s own testimony was catastrophic for the company. On the stand, he claimed that he wasn’t legally entitled to view the company’s financial records because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen, but when pressed, he couldn’t cite any U.S. law that would bar him from inspecting the books.
After a weeklong trial, the jury took just an hour and a half to reach a verdict in favor of Cunha. Magic Companies Group and Sinelli were ordered to pay him nearly $5 million.
Schincariol did not respond to interview requests.
Cunha moved to Portugal shortly after the money changed hands, and Sinelli moved back to Brazil.
Around the same time, another deal fell apart that could have provided a cash infusion to the company. Mill Creek Residential Trust, the nation’s third-largest apartment developer, had been under contract for the Magic Place multifamily site since 2023 and was well into permitting and design. Modera Magic Place was proposed to have up to 728 multifamily units in two phases, but Mill Creek dropped out of the project in the fall of 2024, after Osceola County hiked its mobility fees, which would have added millions to the cost of the project.
Today, Magic Place is nothing more than an entrance road and two vacant commercial lots. Most of the acreage is untouched, and the company has no active permits for the project.
Fiber optic conduit lays across Torino Road at Monza Court in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Signage at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee advertises a clubhouse to come, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Signage at an empty lot at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee advertises development to come, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Fiber optic conduit lays across Torino Road at Monza Court in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Rusting shipping containers sit at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Fiber optic conduit lays across Torino Road at Monza Court in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
A street sign on “Life Is Beautiful Blvd.” points to a dead end at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee , Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Stacked steel beams sit along Torino Road at Monza Court, background, in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Fiber optic conduit lays across Torino Road at Monza Court in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Signage at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee advertises a clubhouse to come, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Building materials sit at the intersection of Torino Road and Monza Court in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Completed townhomes on Torino Road at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Signage at an empty lot at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee advertises development to come, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Fiber optic conduit lays across Torino Road at Monza Court in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
A no trespassing sign welcomes visitors at “Life Is Beautiful Blvd.” at the Magic Village construction site in Kissimmee , Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
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Fiber optic conduit lays across Torino Road at Monza Court in the Magic Village development in Kissimmee, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Magic Companies have collected more than $87 million in deposits for vacation townhomes in Magic Village by Pininfarina, but six years later, it has only finished 76 units. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Magic Companies has completed 76 townhomes in Magic Village 3, but it has only closed sales on 18 units due to a lack of capital. Osceola County issued building permits in July for 35 more units, but there is no construction activity at the site. There is no permit for the clubhouse. At least a dozen investors have successfully sued the company to recover $3.5 million in lost deposits, and eight buyers still have cases against the developer seeking a combined $3.6 million.
Schincariol secured a $30 million construction loan from Brazilian asset manager REAG for Magic Village 3 in June, just months before Brazilian authorities raided REAG’s offices as part of the largest criminal fraud investigation in the nation’s history. CEO Hector Lizasuain, who had been with Magic Companies Group for a decade, resigned in June.
The company is also being sued by one of its own owners’ associations for claims of shoddy construction and failing to maintain the Magic Village 1 property. That case is scheduled for trial in July 2026.
Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at lkinsler@GrowthSpotter.com or (407) 420-6261. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook and LinkedIn.