By Noreen Marcus and Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Republican Michael Carbonara, a Cooper City bitcoin entrepreneur who wants to replace U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, is campaigning on his business acumen.
Yet Carbonara is entangled in three civil lawsuits that may raise questions about his judgment. Two of the suits target him and his Miami-based fintech firm, Ibanera LLC, claiming he condoned the sexual assault of an employee and the company kept at least $18 million it was supposed to transmit for a Bahamian bank. The third alleges a Michigan bitcoin mine he controls is a noisy public nuisance.
Carbonara must be counting on redistricting to redden the District 25 map for 2026 and help him unseat Wasserman Schultz, the mainstay of Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation and a member of the House Appropriations Committee. District 25, one of Florida’s few solid blue regions, covers southern Broward County.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has been pushing for an unusual, mid-decade redistricting process following President Trump’s call for red states to do whatever it takes to add Republican congressional seats via the 2026 midterms.
While the redistricting battle plays out, Carbonara is promoting his crypto expertise, as he did in an interview published last month on the Florida Politics website.
Carbonara said that having managed Ibanera and other companies “will give him a greater understanding of the modern business world than most members of Congress may claim,” Florida Politics recounted in the flattering Sept. 3 article.
Also in the article Carbonara heaped praise on the crypto-boosting GENIUS Act that consumer advocates say will only further enrich crypto-loving President Trump, who signed it in July, and cybercurrency executives like Carbonara. (Last week, Carbonara stepped down as CEO of Ibanera, citing his run for Congress.)
What Florida Politics didn’t mention were two lawsuits predating the article that target the candidate’s crypto operations. One is the unresolved civil action in Miami federal court involving the Bahamian bank. The second, the noise-abatement complaint, convinced a Michigan judge to temporarily shut down Carbonara’s bitcoin mine located near a school.
The third lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court six days after the Florida Politics article posted, is the sexual assault claim of a former Ibanera employee; when she complained about the attack to management, Carbonara allegedly had her fired as retaliation.
Neither Carbonara’s campaign nor Daniel Stabile, a Miami lawyer on his Winston & Strawn defense team, responded to Florida Bulldog’s emailed requests for comment. The Wasserman Schultz campaign did not return calls about the Ibanera litigation.
Claudia Villatoro, the only other Republican currently running for House District 25, was scheduled to officially launch her campaign this week. A Hollywood resident and former commodities broker, she’s in the commercial and residential glass business. She lost a race for a Hollywood commission seat last year.
Villatoro’s campaign handlers prevented her from commenting about the Carbonara lawsuits for this story, Florida Bulldog has learned.
JANE DOE V. CARBONARA
Lawyers for the “Jane Doe” sexual assault plaintiff, the former Ibanera employee, were not as reticent. Daniel Barroukh, from the Derek Smith Law Group’s Miami office, emailed this statement to Florida Bulldog:
“The abuse of power alleged in Ms. Doe’s complaint is sadly emblematic of what women in vulnerable positions face all too often. Our firm stands unwaveringly by Ms. Doe in her pursuit of justice. We are committed to holding those responsible accountable through the legal process, and we are confident that when all the evidence is presented at trial, a jury will deliver a just outcome.”
The introduction to the 63-page, exhaustively detailed complaint, now pending before Miami U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz, sets a dramatic tone:
“This is a sad and horrific case involving the repeated rape of Jane Doe by [Ibanera co-owner Bjorn] Snorrason who lured her to Singapore under the guise of a business trip, where he repeatedly raped, beat, and battered Jane Doe for days on end. Furthermore, this action seeks to hold all Defendants liable for their role in contributing to these horrific acts.”
The complaint even reproduces a photo purporting to show Jane Doe’s bruised legs after the alleged violent rape in September 2024.
Defendant Carbonara, identified as CEO and owner of Ibanera, was not present in Singapore and is not accused of sexually assaulting the plaintiff. He is accused of ignoring her attempts to report the alleged assault by Ibanera co-owner Snorrason, offering her no help whatsoever, and quickly having her fired.
“Carbonara never responded to a single one of Plaintiff’s messages after she fled Singapore, including messages that directly alluded to Snorrason’s sexual assault,” the complaint states.
Within days of the employee escaping from her attacker and returning to Miami, Carbonara “removed her from all of Ibanera’s communications platforms,” the complaint says. She was terminated “as a result of her reports of rape, drugging, discrimination and other unlawful activity.”
Without describing other victims, the complaint tries to connect Carbonara’s company to sensational criminal activity: “In fact, upon information and belief, Ibanera has a pattern and practice of engaging in trafficking female employees across state lines and sexually assaulting and exploiting these individuals.”
Florida Bulldog could not reach Snorrason or identify his attorney in order to request a comment. The Doe v. Ibanera case docket shows that a summons for Snorrason was issued on Sept. 9. As of Thursday, no defense attorney has filed an appearance in the case.
A PARTIAL VICTORY
The case of Deltec Bank & Trust Ltd. v. Carbonara et al., pending before Miami U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian, is a contract dispute in which Deltec, a Bahamian bank, alleges Ibanera violated an agreement to move across borders at least $18 million in cyber and traditional currency on Jan. 6, 2025.
“Deltec Bank trusted Ibanera to transmit its funds. Instead, Ibanera has stolen them,” according to the complaint.
The money was supposed to land in three days, but nothing happened. “After more than a month had passed, Ibanera sent a letter arguing that it was somehow contractually entitled to keep funds that it was entrusted to transmit.
“After an incredulous response from Deltec’s counsel demanding answers, Ibanera abandoned that argument and now contends that Ibanera cannot transmit Deltec’s funds because Ibanera is ‘under audit’ in Singapore,” the complaint says.
Deltec wants its money back, plus interest and attorney fees.
Carbonara’s lawyers achieved a partial victory in the case in July, when U.S. Magistrate Judge Ellen D’Angelo, who is handling motions, denied Deltec’s request for an injunction to prevent Ibanera from hiding its assets.
D’Angelo “accepted Ibanera and Carbonara’s evidence that they ‘have neither stolen nor used the funds for their own purposes,’ “according to a report in The Tribune of Nassau, The Bahamas. “She appeared to be reassured by Ibanera’s chief witness’s testimony” that the funds had been “placed into cryptocurrency for safekeeping” until the dispute is resolved.
There’s still plenty of time to register candidacy for the 2026 elections, but as of Sept. 30 only the Wasserman Schultz and Carbonara District 25 campaigns have reported activity to the Federal Election Commission. Wasserman Schultz, who lives in Weston, has received more than $1.2 million in contributions and had over $1.6 million cash on hand. Carbonara’s report shows he’s loaned his campaign $700,000 and accepted another $20,715 in contributions.
Carbonara’s campaign also reported having just $64,649 cash on hand on Sept. 30. But that’s misleading because it doesn’t account for his campaign’s substantial holdings of cryptocurrency kept in what it described as Ibanera crypto wallets.
In June, his campaign reported it had plowed about $592,000 into Ether and Bitcoin – mostly Bitcoin – which it described as “permissible” investments under federal law. His campaign also reported that during the same quarter, it sold Ether crypto in its Ibanera wallet for $169,649.75. The report does not, however, say whether the campaign sold some or all of its investment, or disclose its change in value.
In August, the FEC sent campaign treasurer Jason Boles a letter that, among other things, said his reporting “fails to properly disclose the…liquidation of bitcoin transactions.”
In September, Boles responded the campaign will keep “detailed records of the dates, amounts, and valuations of all digital currency holdings. Any future gains, losses or liquidations will be reported consistent with best practices and all digital currency will be liquidated and converted back to USD before being used for any disbursement purposes.”
What the FEC might think about the campaign’s response isn’t known. Since Oct. 1, the federal government has been shut down due to Congress’s failure to pass appropriations legislation for the 2026 fiscal year.
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