State Attorney Andrew Bain’s office is dropping four felony charges against former state Rep. Carolina Amesty, who was accused of forging a man’s signature on a form she notarized while working as an administrator for a small Orlando-area private college run by her family.
Amesty was indicted by a grand jury in August after an investigation by Florida Department of Law Enforcement that was initiated in the wake of an investigative story by the Orlando Sentinel into Amesty’s conduct.
The notice of non-prosecution entered into Orange County Circuit court early Sunday morning does not provide any insight into why the charges were dropped. The document signed by Chief Assistant State Attorney Ryan Williams indicates Amesty won’t be prosecuted for any of the four charges.
Williams and press contacts for Bain’s office couldn’t be reached for comment Monday morning.
Amesty’s attorney wrote in an email that his client planned to make a statement shortly.
“We are pleased to see and grateful that the State Attorney’s Office has dropped all charges against Ms. Amesty,” attorney John Lauro wrote. “Justice was served.”
Amesty, a Republican from west Orange County who was first elected to the Florida House in 2022, narrowly lost her reelection bid in November to Democrat Leonard Spencer, a former Disney executive. She was the only sitting GOP legislator to lose their race.
Bain, who was appointed by DeSantis to be the state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties last year, also lost his election bid in November to former State Attorney Monique Worrell.
A story in March published by the Sentinel detailed how Amesty notarized a form in September 2021 claiming Robert Shaffer, a veteran educator with a Ph.D from the University of Florida, was an employee at the university. But Shaffer, who previously served as the principal of the adjacent K-12 school run by Amesty’s family, told the Sentinel he never worked at the university nor signed the form Amesty said he did.
Amesty immediately pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, which were third-degree felonies. Three of the counts name the Shaffer document that was a subject of the Sentinel’s investigation.
anmartin@orlandosentinel.com