Meserve booked in Duval County Jail on real estate charge

• By Drew Dixon
• Story updated at 11:42 AM on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010

Meserve

Suspended Jacksonville City Councilman John Meserve was booked in the Duval County jail Jan. 19, a week after State Attorney Angela Corey said he would be formally charged for not having a real estate license in land deals he profited from in Mayport village.

Meserve was admitted in the jail in downtown Jacksonville at 10:17 a.m. and released within an hour of his booking on a third-degree felony charge of being an unlicensed real estate broker.

It is illegal for anyone in Florida to profit from a real estate transaction without a real estate license. That’s what Corey on Jan. 12 said Meserve did when he made about $105,000 in commissions in land deals in 2005-06 in Mayport village.

Meserve was also mayor of Atlantic Beach during some of those transactions and was chairman of the Mayport Waterfront Partnership, an advisory board to Jacksonville City Hall.

Meserve has said he was only serving as a “consultant” to many of the land owners and helped prepare their land before it was sold to Vestcor Cos. While Meserve did not directly work for Vestcor, he received the commissions on four land transactions from Don Wolfson, who was the licensed real estate broker for the land development firm.

Meserve was suspended from office as a council member by Gov. Charlie Crist only a few hours after Corey said she was charging him. His replacement on the council has not been appointed by Crist yet.

The 69-year-old Meserve has not had his first court date set.

Beyond the criminal charge, Meserve still faces possible civil penalties from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the agency that oversees real estate laws. It was that regulatory agency that found “probable cause” that Meserve should be prosecuted following a 76-page investigative report that concluded in late December after initiating the probe in August following Times-Union reports on the land deals that involved Meserve.

The regulatory agency has filed an administrative complaint against Meserve and is seeking civil damages against him for violation of the law which could include fines. Meserve has to respond to that civil filing this month and decide if he wants to take the civil case to an administrative hearing, which is similar to arbitration.