For two years, senior residents at Naples Estates mobile home park in East Naples complained about hefty water and sewer bills that “wildly fluctuate” — some 10 or 13 times their past usage.
Last spring, billing records show, 75-year-old Ciro Ghiraldi was charged $131.17 for using 11,800 gallons of water and $92.01 for 11,800 gallons in sewer charges for 30 days in his mobile home at the 55-plus community at the corner of County Barn and Rattlesnake Hammock roads. Thea Sarro’s May 2024 bill showed the 72-year-old used at least 13 times more water than the same period in 2023. Her $139.73 bill eclipsed a $9.40 bill a year earlier and $40.31 a month prior.
Another resident received a $2,000 bill for water and sewage charges, court records say, and some were charged an amount that exceeded their entire prior year’s charges.
Residents are charged for utilities, as well as a lot fee for renting the lot or leasing a mobile home, as part of their monthly bills. Court records show lot fees of $1,194 to $1,294. If they withhold the contested utility payments, as park employees advise, they’re hit with notices threatening eviction.
For those who persisted in their complaints and demands, water bills were “slashed dramatically or even reduced to zero,” temporarily stopping what they call “fraudulent billing.” However, Colorado Springs-based YES Energy Management Inc. refused to refund what residents were overcharged or to rectify the problem.
Class action involving seniors
Now, residents have taken their complaints to Collier Circuit Court in a class-action lawsuit that alleges price gouging of water and sewer bills. It calls the residents a “protected class of elderly who deserve protection against those who prey upon the elderly with scams and financial abuses.”
The lawsuit seeks claims under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, which protects consumers from unfair, deceptive or unconscionable trade practices; and under a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act claim, which would allow the plaintiffs to collect triple the usual monetary damages. The lawsuit also alleges breach of contract and financial exploitation of vulnerable elderly residents for personal gain.
“Defendants’ fraudulent billions are not merely isolated incidents but have been part of a long-standing, many-years scheme to defraud the residents of Naples Estates,” the lawsuit alleges. “… Defendants’ actions in how they overcharged, over-billed residents of Naples Estates for water and sewer charges and usage has been entirely deceptive, unconscionable and perhaps may qualify as criminal.”
Purchase and lease agreements and a Cal-Am prospectus for potential purchasers state that water and sewer charges will be based upon “actual usage” on meters.
“However, defendants willfully chose to disregard actual meter readings for the plaintiffs and class members, instead using estimated, inflated and inaccurate guesses — not according to readings of the meters in their homes,” the lawsuit says, calling it “fraudulently billing.”
The lawsuit claims Cal-Am, which owns the park and does business as Naples Estates, and YES Energy Management, a third-party billing company, engage in “fraudulent, inaccurate and overstated billing practices.”
The allegations aren’t new to YES Energy Management. It settled a $2.8 million class-action lawsuit two years ago that accused it of charging unlawful administration fees to Maryland tenants for electronic utility bill payments. Its settlement doesn’t admit wrongdoing.
Better Business Bureau records show the company received 100 complaints over the last three years, with customers reporting drastic fee increases in utility bills, some doubling or tripling, while others rose more than 280%. Others say they were charged twice for payments or faced unexplained “past due” balances they disputed.
Reddit users call their water, trash, sewer and electricity bills from YES “insane” and exorbitant, saying “service fees” exceed actual usage costs. They report utility bills of $500-$700 for small, one-bedroom apartments.
Improved park
The lawsuit comes nearly a decade after Naples Estates residents lost the longest-running lawsuit in Collier County history, the right to purchase their 75-acre park for $14.4 million. Homeowners had the right of first refusal to purchase it if it were ever offered for sale and they learned it was being sold to Ell-Cap/75 and Manufactured Home Communities in 1998, when it was valued at $11.6 million.
They won their Circuit Court case but lost in 2016 when the park owners filed an appeal with the Second District Court of Appeal and residents missed a deadline.
Since then, Cal-Am, the park’s manager, has made many improvements to the roughly 500-home park, which features pickleball, a 30,000-square foot clubhouse, a pool and spa, a grand ballroom and stage, miniature golf, bocce ball, shuffleboard courts, pet parks and more.
The lawsuit points out that residents who live alone are charged higher bills for sewer and water usage than mobile homes with several residents.
“Bills for the water and/or sewer charges wildly fluctuate, with some as low as $8.14 one month,” the lawsuit says, noting monthly charges show identical gallon usage for water and sewage, implying the volume of water coming in exactly matches water flowing out.
As a result, the sewer charges may be overbilled every month, the lawsuit alleges, noting bills “merely matched” water input to an estimated sewer output, assuming equal consumption, when sewer usage “would and should be” less than water use.
“There is no possibility that plaintiffs are using the amounts of water as claimed on many of these invoices,” the lawsuit says, calling a $2,000 bill for water and sewage “clearly fictitious and willfully excessive.”
One resident received several monthly invoices totaling “multiple times” the home’s prior usage. In one bill, the lawsuit says, his usage jumped from 3,213 gallons for one month in 2024 to 26,340 in the same month last year. When he contacted Cal-Am, he was told not to pay the disputed amount to YES Energy Management with his monthly lot rent bill because “they were aware that there was a problem” and he should withhold $601.
But last November, the lawsuit alleges, he was threatened with eviction for following those instructions. When he contacted YES, a representative informed him the charges “were not based upon actual meter readings” and were “fictitious,” based on an alleged usage estimate. To avoid eviction, he was forced to pay the $601.
After the resident complained to the BBB, the lawsuit says, the company “purportedly reset” the meter and new charges were reduced to a total of “$29, or even lower.” He pointed out to the BBB that he received a bill for 10 times his usage, prompting the BBB to intervene and win his case. He was informed he would not be charged until costs caught up with what he’d overpaid.
Seasonal home, water off
“Plaintiffs are aware of one or more neighbors who only occupy this residence seasonally, who turn off their water when leaving for the summer, yet they receive very high bills, which dramatically increased over 2024 for water and sewer to the amount of $200 or more, despite the home sitting completely unused,” the lawsuit contends.
From March to April 2025, defendants jointly billed senior residents living in small, similar-sized mobile homes, a “bizarre range” of charges, with sewer as low as $13.69 to at least $204.81 charged to another. For the same period, residents were billed an “extreme range” for water, as low as $13.69 for one to $289.44 for another.
As a result, some residents put their homes up for sale. Residents contacted by The Naples Press didn’t respond to requests for comment or said they feared retribution by Naples Estates if they spoke up.
The residents’ attorney, Mitchell L. Freedman of Tampa, was out of the country and unavailable for comment as of press time. Court records don’t yet show an attorney for YES Energy Management or the park, but an attorney who represented YES in the past class-action lawsuit said he hadn’t been retained; others didn’t respond.
The lawsuit names as plaintiffs Ciro Ghiraldi and Louis DeVito, 63, as representatives of the class, and seeks to determine whether defendants knowingly billed residents for water and sewage usage they knew or should have known was inflated, inaccurate and not based upon actual usage, or whether they committed fraud to willfully and intentionally overcharge and overbill residents.
The lawsuit also seeks to determine if they conspired together; when they learned of the overcharges and what actions were taken; whether it’s occurred in their other communities; and whether it violates the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The lawsuit seeks punitive damages, which are meant to punish and set an example for wrongdoing, and a judge’s order preventing defendants from “continued unlawful, unscrupulous, fraudulent and unconscionable overbilling.”
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