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FORT MYERS —
It sounds like a bad TV movie.

A sick Lee County hotelier worried about his finances and stomach problems looked in the Yellow Pages under herbs, found the Botanica 7 Potensias Africanas shop in Fort Myers, then sought treatment and help.

On that day in October 2007, Enzo Vincenzi, 43, now of Estero, paid the owner, Miriam Pacheco, $50 and the “Santeria Africana” spiritual adviser and healer warned he was in grave danger. Pacheco, who calls herself Madrina Miriam (godmother Miriam), warned only she could help.

Over weeks and months, there were ritualistic ceremonies involving a dead bird, a sacrificed rooster, liquid potions, prayers and chants by Pacheco, her Santerian “god-daughter,” Maria Teresa Torres, and another god-daughter.

In the end, Pacheco took Vincenzi to a Fort Myers lawyer, and Vincenzi signed documents that Pacheco prepared, signing away his motel.

Those are the allegations in a lawsuit Vincenzi and Sabal Oasis Inn filed in Lee Circuit Court against Pacheco, 57, and Torres, 43.

“It was a very bizarre case,” Naples attorney Michael D. Randolph, who filed a related lawsuit against Pacheco and Torres, said of Vincenzi’s allegations.

But attorney Joseph Hoffman, who represented Pacheco and Torres, just considers it a case involving a language barrier: Vincenzi speaks English, while Pacheco and Torres only speak Spanish.

“I’ve had weirder cases,” Hoffman said. “I’m not saying this was plain vanilla. But it’s a property dispute. That’s all it was.”

His clients have denied allegations of ritualistic ceremonies, fraud or coercing Vincenzi into turning over his motel.

On Thursday, Lee Circuit Judge Sherra Winesett signed an order for partial summary judgment, for $37,000 that a Lee circuit jury awarded Vincenzi in April for intentional infliction of emotional stress.

Vincenzi, who ended up marrying Torres’ daughter, was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital under the state’s Baker Act months after the rituals, due to the loss of his motel and fears that Pacheco’s predictions of doom, his poisoning and death would come true.

His wife, Cynthia, testified against her mother and Pacheco, as did others who said Pacheco scammed them.

The jury also awarded Vincenzi $99,500 for the loss of his 13-room motel and attached home, finding fraudulent misrepresentation by Pacheco and Torres.

But Pacheco doesn’t have $99,000 and Vincenzi’s attorney, Bradley Lang of Naples, is working on a rescission of deed so Vincenzi can get his motel back.

“Returning the motel is ‘equitable relief’ and only the judge can do that,” Lang said after the brief hearing. “The jury can only award monetary damages.”

A rescission of deed is designed to make everyone involved whole, a domino effect that returns all parties back to the way each started.

In the other case, attorney Randolph has $250,000 that Pacheco obtained through a loan to pay his client, Leone Mason Contracting Inc., which is owned by Vincenzi’s father. He’d had the motel’s original mortgage, sued Pacheco and Torres for payment after the transfer, and they defaulted.

“If you have a car that you bought, you give it back to the dealer and the dealer gives it back to the manufacturer and the manufacturer gives it back to the smelter,” Randolph said, explaining a rescission. “You either choose damages or you choose rescission.”

Randolph would return the $250,000 to Pacheco, who would give it to her lender. Pacheco and Torres and their families would vacate the motel, then Vincenzi would get it back.

A hearing on the deed rescission hasn’t yet been scheduled.

“We’re waiting to see if my client can come up with the money,” Hoffman said. “Money is tight now.”

Vincenzi is hopeful.

“They made me homeless,” Vincenzi said after the hearing, adding that he’s unemployed and faces nearly $20,000 in medical bills. “They traumatized me, I ended up in the hospital, I’m drowning in debt — and they’re still in my house.”

Depositions show Pacheco, of Cuba, and Torres, who is from Honduras, have elementary school educations. They work at the motel and Pacheco’s store, which sells saint statues, candles, herbs for spiritual baths, and other items for spiritual ceremonies, voodoo and Palo, an Afro-Cuban religion also known as Reglas de Congo.

Pacheco denied doing voodoo or Palo, saying her son wrote that when he set up her website: http://botanica7potencias.com/

After the lawsuits were filed, there were allegations back and forth and restraining orders.

“They made up an incident report and three weeks later, when I was in court, they have me arrested and claim I assaulted them,” Vincenzi said. “The day we were supposed to go to trial on this, they dropped it. The judge warned them. He saw right through the whole thing.”

Torres, however, was convicted of battery on Vincenzi and resisting arrest after a Lee County deputy saw Torres hit Vincenzi.

Vincenzi also filed complaints to alert state and federal agencies about the real estate fraud. He’s reported the Fort Myers attorney who handled the deed transfer to The Florida Bar, two real estate brokers and an accountant to the Division of Business and Professional Regulation, and mailed letters to the state Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney, the FBI and others.

The original lawsuit filed by Vincenzi’s prior attorney, Andrew Epstein of Fort Myers, details the unusual case:

Pacheco cautioned Vincenzi he was in danger of demonic spirits, the devil, and said the hotel’s prior owners had buried the devil. He was in grave danger, faced IRS problems and she claimed prostitutes worked at his motel.

She said she could help by becoming his Santeria Africana godmother. At a card reading and St. Lazarus ritualistic ceremony, she warned he was a “walking dead man” and his housekeeper was poisoning his food.

“During the course of the ceremony, Pacheco killed a bird and passed it over Vincenzi’s stomach while praying and chanting, which she claimed would heal his stomach ailments,” the lawsuit says. “Pacheco also covered Vincenzi’s eyes, made him drink an unidentified liquid and laid her hands on him — all of which she claimed would help heal him.”

A week later, she sacrificed a rooster, saying it would protect him from the motel’s former owners, who were trying to kill him. She told him to pay her $500 so he could move into the home she shared with Torres. He remained there, confined to a bed, for about two months as she and Torres served as spiritual advisers.

She took him to a beach and performed a “Queen of the Seas” ceremony, chanting and praying over him as he lay in the sand. She urged him to see her attorney, who could help with legal problems she predicted.

She coerced him into transferring the property, promising to save him from demonic spirits and attempts on his life.

She took him to her attorney and Vincenzi signed deeds Pacheco prepared, transferring the motel to her and Torres without cost. He lost his Jaguar, pickup truck, motorboat and possessions after she evicted him; they deny taking his vehicles.

A former client used to picket Pacheco’s store, claiming she was defrauded, and evidence Lang obtained shows this wasn’t the only time Pacheco was accused of fraud.

An attorney for Devoe Pontiac in Bonita Springs successfully fought a worker’s compensation claim she’d filed under her married name, Miriam Engstrom. An insurance database turned up many fraudulent slip and falls, injuries, a stroke and accidents she’d filed claims for against four employers from 2001 to April 2003; insurers denied them.

Documents show she settled a slip-and-fall hernia case against Walmart for about $56,000 and got $8,000 for a 2001 motor vehicle claim. That insurer later found she’d had two other auto claims in 1998 and 1999, and had sought benefits for an alleged 1995 industrial accident — although she claimed to have only worked as a housekeeper and had no prior auto claims.

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