Former North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo pleaded guilty Monday to a charge of voting using an address where he didn’t live, as part of a deal with prosecutors.
Former North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo pleaded guilty Monday to a charge of voting using an address where he didn’t live, as part of a deal with prosecutors.
In 2023, DeFillipo had faced three counts of an unqualified elector willfully voting, a third-degree felony.
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WATCH HEREAs part of the agreement, DeFillipo will not be considered a convicted felon, but he is banned from running for office again and will be placed on probation for the next four years. He will also have to complete 200 hours of community service.
In response to the plea, the former mayor told the judge his heart was broken because he won’t be able to run for office again.
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"Former Mayor Di Filippo accepts responsibility for what plainly was not the best way to handle his residency issue. He acknowledges that, especially because he spent his entire life trying to help the public," defense attorney Benedict Kuhne said. "He knows that this is the way for the public to help him to move along. He'll be able to continue in his employment status. He will not be gone from the community. He intends to recommit to the community, while not as a public official, but he expects to be a servant of the people for a long time to come."
It’s a case the NBC6 Investigates team has been following for years. It all began when a resident and a commissioner’s former campaign worker filed a complaint with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust claiming the mayor lived in Davie with his family and not in North Miami Beach as required by the city charter.
In 2023, the mayor, in an exclusive interview with NBC6, admitted to using an old address within city limits to vote, calling it an honest mistake.
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"I totally forgot, it was an oversight and I had it fixed immediately when I noticed," DeFillipo told NBC6. "We’re human, we make mistakes."
Later, in a deposition, the mayor acknowledged his family was living in a $1.2 million home in Davie. He cited “marital issues” and concerns over crime for his family’s move.
DeFillipo and the North Miami Beach commission were embroiled in controversy for months. Some commissioners began refusing to attend city meetings, arguing the mayor didn’t have the authority to preside over the meetings.
"Today’s guilty plea by former North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo ends a long and painful political saga for the residents of the city. Florida’s voting laws exist to ensure that our elections are an honest representation of the will of the voters," Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement Monday. "Sadly, former Mayor DeFillipo’s actions deliberately undermined that process and today was the day of reckoning. Voting is too serious a matter to allow any form of manipulation to occur. I and my public corruption prosecutors will not allow that to happen."
