A former executive for Oakes Farms claims he stole for its owner, not from its owner.
In his answer to an amended lawsuit filed in federal court, Steven A. Veneziano, Jr., contends his accusers got it wrong.
In the civil suit, Veneziano is accused of fraud and embezzlement for stealing millions from Naples-based Oakes Farms and its local affiliates.
Veneziano paints another story.
In his answer, he points the finger back at the plaintiffs and his former boss, Alfie Oakes.
With them, he claims to have committed numerous crimes, including government and insurance fraud, for their mutual benefit, and the benefit of “other coconspirators.”
More about the lawsuit involving Oakes Farms
The suit alleges that Veneziano used his “nearly unfettered access” to the Oakes’ accounts, information and administration to steal money and support a lavish lifestyle and gambling habit starting in 2022, after becoming the “de facto CEO” of Oakes Farms and its affiliates. In his answer, Veneziano denies it all, accusing the plaintiffs of widespread fraud.
The amended complaint came after U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell sided with Veneziano on a motion to dismiss, removing his companies as defendants, and ordering the plaintiffs to amend and refile their case — or she’d dismiss it.
Like the original suit, the revised one, filed on April 13, seeks about $12.5 million in actual damages based on the estimated value of the funds and assets Veneziano allegedly stole from 2020 to 2024, but now asks for “trebled damages” — or triple the actual damages with new counts brought under state law.
Founded and owned by Alfie Oakes, Oakes Farms is a diversified agricultural company. Operations include farming, packing and distributing fresh produce and seafood, and running organic restaurants and cafes, and farmer’s market-style grocery stores.
The other named plaintiffs in the case are Oakes Farm OP LLC and South Florida Produce LLC.
Oakes Farm OP is involved in the farming and packing of fresh produce, while South Florida Produce is a wholesale produce distributor.
In his answer to the revised suit, Veneziano asserts he and his wife owned South Florida Produce after it was transferred into their names in January 2023. As a result, he said, the company should not even be suing him.
Fraud allegations against Oakes
As part of his defense, Veneziano accuses Oakes of facilitating “the creation of numerous straw entities to employ sophisticated schemes to defraud the United States government, insurance companies, business partners, and civil litigants adverse to Plaintiffs.”
Veneziano lists a few examples of the alleged impropriety, orchestrated by Alfie Oakes, including:
Veneziano claims: “This straw scheme was ordinary and customary business for Oakes Farms to defraud numerous government programs.”
He adds: “Alfie Oakes also directed straw companies be used to acquire millions of dollars in fraudulent crop insurance claims for the benefit of Oakes Farms, himself, and his coconspirators.”
Veneziano implicates Oakes in COVID conspiracy
On August 14, 2025, Veneziano pleaded guilty in federal court in Fort Myers to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He took responsibility for wrongly obtaining millions of dollars in funds from the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, and he awaits his sentencing.
Veneziano addresses the criminal case in his answer to the Oakes suit.
He asserts he was paid to file the fraudulent CFAP applications “on behalf of his coconspirators, including Alfie Oakes, but he did not receive the illicit funds.” He alleges some of the illicit funds were used to purchase gold for Oakes, while other funds were used to pay Oakes Farms’ expenses and other costs.
While court documents in the criminal case involving the CFAP program suggest that Oakes Farms and Alfie Oakes may have been involved in the conspiracy, they aren’t named specifically as conspirators − and they haven’t been charged with anything. Oakes has declined to comment about the case, which followed a raid on his North Naples home and Immokalee packing plant in November 2024 by federal agents.
Executive denies most claims in civil suit
Veneziano denies most of the claims made against him in the Oakes’ suit.
Among the claims he specifically denies:
In his answer, Veneziano admits to editing invoices and other internal records, but contends he did so at the direction of Alfie Oakes, to “facilitate various crop insurance fraud and tax evasion schemes for the benefit of Plaintiffs, himself, and his coconspirators.”
He cited examples of the alleged fraudulent documentation, including the misrepresentation of a farm off Sanctuary Road in East Naples as organic, when it reportedly lost its certification as such in 2019. With the certification, farmers can get more financial assistance from the federal government.
Same as the original suit, the amended one includes two of Veneziano’s now-dissolved limited liability companies as defendants: Veneziano Farms and Veneziano Property Management.
In his answer, Veneziano claims that Veneziano Farms was created as a “straw entity for Oakes Farms to apply for fraudulent funds under government relief programs, crop insurance fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.”
After 2020, he alleges Veneziano Farms became a vehicle to commit both “CFAP and DOD fraud,” with Alfie Oakes and Oakes Farms deriving the “vast majority of the criminal proceeds from these fraudulent transactions.”
Veneziano asserts there were big money transfers into his personal accounts that Oakes himself directed, including for the construction of Farmer Joe’s, to conceal the store’s ties to Oakes Farms.
Despite Veneziano’s own “significant labor investment and cash contributions to the construction of Farmer Joe’s,” named after his own grandfather, he asserts Oakes altered documents to “steal” away his rightful ownership interest in the company and “transfer it to a private trust.”
Veneziano contends Oakes had the “ultimate control” over the Veneziano Farms accounts, “authorizing deposits and withdrawals,” as well as the accounts of Veneziano Property Management.
Executive defends personal payments to himself
While working for Oakes Farms, Veneziano said he “incurred a tremendous amount of personal expense, via cash payments, that required him to be reimbursed.”
In a few instances, he claims to have paid for protesters to stake “fake rallies” against candidates “politically opposed to Alfie Oakes, and for unpermitted construction work at two of Oakes’s locations in Immokalee.
Veneziano denies being a habitual gambler and using company money for that purpose as alleged in the suit. He said he gambled often to “clean money obtained through Plaintiffs’ various fraudulent schemes.”
In some cases, he said, he used his winnings to pay the plaintiffs’ business expenses and costs.
He denies accusations he wrongly added friends and family to the Oakes Farms’ or related companies’ payrolls, saying it was done under Alfie’s direction to “commit various criminal frauds against the federal government.”
In one example, Veneziano claims that Oakes added a kiteboarding instructor, cousins and others to the payroll to “justify employee numbers in applications for funds from the Paycheck Protection Program, a government relief program.” The program provided forgivable loans to qualifying businesses hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sometimes, Veneziano said Oakes paid him generous bonuses for his long hours, including in December 2020, when he received a $1 million bonus for his hard work in the prior month. Veneziano contends there were times he worked more than 100 hours a week, and for that reason, a caretaker for his kids was added to the payroll.
At all times, he said, Oakes had “complete control over the funds flowing through his multiple straw entities,” with Oakes Farms’ chief financial officer filing all of the tax returns for Veneziano Farms, Veneziano Property Management, and the personal tax returns for Veneziano and his wife.
Veneziano credits his cooperation in a federal criminal investigation for the raids on Oakes’s properties in 2024.
Soon after the raids, Veneziano said he fled Florida because “he feared for his safety and the safety of his family.” He and his family now live in Texas.
Veneziano began working for Oakes Farms in 2013, and he quickly rose up through the ranks.
More about the fraud accusations and defenses
In their suit, the Oakes companies accuse Veneziano of fraudulent representation, conversion, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, and violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices and Civil RICO acts.
Separate counts have been brought against Veneziano Farms and Veneziano Property Management for “aiding and abetting” Veneziano’s alleged fraud.
In his answer, Veneziano argues he should not be held liable for his actions based on six defenses, including that all of the fraud claims should be barred, or prevented, by the doctrines of “unclean hands,” waiver and ratification, due to Alfie Oakes’s alleged involvement.
The other legal defenses:
Additionally, Veneziano said South Florida Produce lacks standing to bring the claims it has, as he is the true owner of it.
He alleges that without his or his wife’s knowledge, or consent, they were removed as the sole managing members of the limited liability company, following the raids in 2024, including on the offices of South Florida Produce.
After the amended complaint was filed last month, Nicole Hughes Waid, a Fort Myers attorney who represents Veneziano, had a mixed reaction. At the time, she said in an email that she didn’t know whether to be alarmed by the many misrepresentations in it, or to be “slightly impressed by the creativity it took to draft such a false and misleading narrative.”
“On the one hand, the Amended Complaint claims that Oakes Farms is ‘one of the largest independently owned agribusiness operations in Florida.’ But on the other hand, the Amended Complaint would also like us to believe that this successful business that reaches global markets was the helpless victim of one man over multiple years who served as the ‘de facto President and CEO’ of ‘all Oakes Farms entities,'” she said.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs could not immediately be reached for comment about Veneziano’s response to the suit, including his serious allegations against Alfie Oakes.
In a text, Oakes said there is so much information he’d love to share, but because of the ongoing federal investigation, “our attorneys are instructing me to be silent.”
“I am working on a response with them now,” he said. “I am looking forward to the truth coming out as this investigation unfolds.”
Laura Layden is a senior business and government reporter. Reach her by email at laura.layden@naplesnews.com.
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This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Former Oakes Farms exec claims owner Alfie Oakes orchestrated fraud
Reporting by Laura Layden, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
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