“I Am Not a Thief”: A Developer’s Defence After Depositors Lost Their Coral Spring Down Payments

• Buyers paid $355,000 down plus $29,000 monthly toward lots
• It’s unclear whether Newstar even owned the land it sold
• Authorities shut down construction over a missing environmental permit
• The CEO admitted the project failed but denied wrongdoing

Depositors in Newstar’s proposed Coral Spring development paid between $1.2 million and $3.2 million per lot, structured as a one-time down payment of $355,000 followed by $29,000 monthly installments until completion, only to find themselves waiting months for refunds after the project collapsed, according to Gleaner investigation. Some depositors, including Pinnock-Barclay, Gonzalez and Rivera, had their deposits refunded; others were still waiting.

Investigators identified several red flags suggesting the development was in trouble well before it collapsed, even as the company continued actively collecting deposits: it remained unclear whether Newstar actually owned the property it was selling, four sales agreements reviewed by the Gleaner carried no folio and volume numbers, the unique identifying digits that confirm a property’s registered ownership, a detail other depositors separately noticed as well.

Local and state authorities had shut down exploratory construction work at the Coral Spring site the previous December specifically because Newstar lacked the mandatory environmental permit required under the Natural Resources Conservation Authority Act, a regulatory failure that predated the deposit refund crisis and should have been a visible warning sign to anyone monitoring the project’s actual legal standing.

Newstar CEO Sparks, confronted directly by the Sunday Gleaner, conceded the development had real problems while rejecting the fraud accusations outright. I am not a thief, I’m not a fraud and I’m not a scammer. I don’t want anyone’s money. I work for what I want, he said. Yes, this particular transaction did not come out successful. Separate police investigations in Trelawny and St Ann were opened regardless, the practical gap between a developer’s stated intentions and depositors’ actual, unrefunded losses being exactly what law enforcement, rather than the developer’s own account, would ultimately have to sort out.

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