FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) –\u00a0A legal battle involving former Oakes Farm Vice President Steven Veneziano Jr. and his companies took a new turn as a federal judge in Fort Myers denied a motion to send the case back to state court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The civil case, , has been closely followed by WINK Investigates for months. The lawsuit seeks $12.5 million in damages.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for Oakes Farms argued that the case belonged in Florida, claiming Veneziano maintained “extensive ties” to the state through property and voter registration.<\/p>\n
However, the judge ruled that Veneziano successfully proved he and his family moved to California in late 2024.<\/p>\n
The court cited several factors for the decision, including the sale of their Florida home, the enrollment of their children in California schools, and the surrender of Florida driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n
This ruling comes after Veneziano entered a sworn declaration last week,\u00a0claiming he feared for his life because he was cooperating with a federal fraud investigation\u00a0invo\u2026<\/p>\n
Due to the parties now being considered citizens of different states, the judge ruled the case will remain in federal court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK) –\u00a0A legal battle involving former Oakes Farm Vice President Steven Veneziano Jr. and his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[63588,209,211,210,2675,41719,28,897,63590,63593,2785,17011,63589,63591,63592,13341],"class_list":{"0":"post-132351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-alfie-oakes","9":"tag-cape-coral","10":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","11":"tag-cape-coral-news","12":"tag-driver","13":"tag-federal-judge","14":"tag-florida","15":"tag-fort-myers","16":"tag-fort-myers-judge","17":"tag-james-oakes","18":"tag-judge","19":"tag-myers","20":"tag-oakes","21":"tag-steven-veneziano-jr","22":"tag-un-court","23":"tag-vice-president"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}