He's a big talker. Every dealing I've ever had with him ended up in nothing," said Michael Ellert, an agent for the Palm Beach Symphony. He said Bornia approached him about several projects that never came to fruition. Bornia, Ellert said, is one of two people in South Florida who "if they call, I don't even bother returning their calls. There's no sense."

Others who have worked with him at the Cultural Trust of the Palm Beaches - including artists, vendors and former board members - have described him as someone prone to stretching the truth.

"If I had an employee that constantly lied and changed his or her story as much as I have had to deal with in the past year," Ben Boynton, a founder of the Wellington cultural arts group, wrote in his Sept. 5, 2005, resignation letter, "he or she would have been fired long ago." 

Bornia grew up in Palm Beach County. He graduated in 1999 from Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach and attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, leaving in 2001 without a degree.

In October 2003 he announced he had formed the Palm Beach Festival of the Arts, an alliance of 16 local arts groups, including Ballet Florida and the Armory Arts Center, to stage a season of events. On the festival's letterhead, Bornia was listed as its executive and artistic director. A musical he wrote was to be the season's showpiece.

A month later people raised concerns. Vicki Halmos, a Palm Beach philanthropist, said Bornia told an elaborate tale about how the composer Marvin Hamlisch read the script to his musical and loved it so much he wanted to mentor him. Halmos said she spoke with Hamlisch's representatives in New York and that they denied the relationship with Bornia. A signed letter on the composer's letterhead said Hamlisch had never seen the musical and therefore "cannot recommend it."

"He gathered a huge bunch of people and proceeded to spin this amazing yarn," said Halmos. She said Bornia also said he had received a donation of at least $50,000 from Florida Crystals, which she later found was untrue.

"He tended to exaggerate things and to make promises he couldn't deliver," said Juan Escalante, who worked with Bornia at the Festival of the Arts and later came with him to the Cultural Trust. Escalante served as the trust's executive director while Bornia was artistic director and said he left in early 2005 because he was frustrated with the group's direction.

In the end, only a few events happened and the Festival of the Arts quickly dissolved in early 2004, barely halfway through its scheduled six-month first season.

Bruce Helander, whom the Festival of the Arts designated its artist of the year, said he gave Bornia a $40,000 piece to auction with the promise he would get a third of the sale. He said he never saw the money and has no idea what happened to his artwork.

"He was a showman, a song-and-dance man to a lot of people who helped him get started," Helander said. "It's a pattern: He brings you in, uses your reputation and leaves you holding the bag."

Piconcelli said that under Bornia's influence the group, which was formed in 1997, soon lost sight of its goal to build a cultural campus on 10 acres leased to it by Wellington. He said the trust's board agreed to do one or two arts events to get attention and then focus on building an amphitheater. But he said Bornia's plans - which included a sculpture show, a jazz festival and children's plays - grew out of control.

The trust has not yet filed its taxes for its last fiscal year, which ended Aug. 31, 2007. But according to federal tax documents from June 2004 to August 2006, the latest available, the trust raised $351,495 and spent $311,887, leaving it with just $39,608.

"I think damage has been done," said Tamara Gerber, a former board member. "I think the organization has lost credibility and trust from people who are already donors and people who could be donors."

Former Daytona Beach concert organizer and ex-magazine editor Manny Bornia is on to a new venture: a marketing business based at his father’s medical clinic in Palm Beach County. The new firm’s agent is linked to a drug trafficking and racketeering case that has another doctor facing murder charges, according to state and court records. 
Bornia’s new company, Experimar Inc., just registered Thursday with the state Division of Corporations and shares an address with the Lake Worth office of Dr. Manuel Bornia’s clinic Palm Springs Internal Medicine, records show. 
The registered agent for Experimar is a woman named Reyna Rosario, who is serving probation stemming from the 2008 arrest of her then-boyfriend, Lake Worth pediatrician Dr. Sergio Rodriguez. Rodriguez is awaiting trial on charges in the painkiller-overdose deaths of three patients. 
On Saturday, the younger Bornia said he has no real business connection with Rosario, no knowledge of her past and no intention of keeping her on as his registered agent. 
“I’m floored about this whole thing,” he said. “The only reason you guys are doing this is to somehow shed some negative light on me, and that’s insane.” 
Bornia said Rosario, a friend of his mother’s, merely “filed some paperwork” to establish his company, as a favor. After a conversation with a reporter Saturday, he said he would call the state Division of Corporations Monday and remove her as his registered agent. 
Bornia’s exit from the Daytona Beach area would end a more-than-two-year stint as one of the community’s most controversial figures. Bornia was the promoter behind the 2010 American Music Festival, which created $1.8 million in unexpected debt. Daytona State College fronted the concert series more than $1 million in public money that never got repaid, a move that eventually led President Kent Sharples to retire under a separation agreement. 
Bornia’s company, Vanguard Omnimedia, also ran the 2nd Street Public Market for several months in Holly Hill, using a historic city property that received more than $1 million in community redevelopment funds for renovations. 
Until recently, Bornia also ran Floridian View, a monthly magazine marked by Bornia’s often-biting political commentary and interviews with prominent local figures. 
Through it all, he established a reputation as a skilled marketer and salesman whose projects didn’t always meet expectations. The words “American Music Festival” became associated with failure and debt. The Holly Hill market fizzled and ended with few people attending, although a local church is trying to revive it. The magazine and Bornia parted ways after two election issues, each full of candidate ads, went out late — the August issue arriving in mailboxes well after the Aug. 14 primary. 
Volusia County Councilman Josh Wagner, a former partner in Vanguard who left the company last year, said he’d heard Bornia was considering moving on from Daytona Beach and didn’t dissuade him. 
“I told him that was probably a good idea,” Wagner said. 
Experimar, according to a description Bornia posted on the website professionalontheweb.com, is an “experiential marketing, branding, creative direction, strategic partnership development and brand management” company that “advocates engagement to drive behavior-changing results for its clients.” 
Its address within his father’s medical clinic, Bornia said, is temporary as he decides where he’ll work next, and he’s not sure where that will be or in what role. 
Rosario, 41, couldn’t be reached Saturday. She is on probation until 2014, according to the state Department of Corrections. Her probation-listed address on Cleveland Street in Lake Worth matches the one listed on Experimar’s registration. 
Rosario was arrested in Lake Worth in 2008 when police charged her then-boyfriend, Rodriguez, with trafficking in oxycodone and delivery of methadone. She originally faced many of the same charges — racketeering, conspiracy, trafficking in oxycodone and possession of methadone — but eventually pleaded guilty to culpable negligence causing injury and received probation instead of prison. 
In 2010, with Rodriguez still in jail awaiting trial on the drug charges, a grand jury indicted him on three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Robert Bowes, Robert Peterkin and Robert Miller, all patients who overdosed. 
Rodriguez, now 56, was trained as a doctor in the Dominican Republic and also operated a pediatrician’s clinic west of Palm Beach. He remains in jail in Palm Beach County, awaiting trial.

HOLLY HILL -- The closing of the 2nd Street Public Market in Holly Hill as reported in today's Daytona Beach News-Journal, isn't the only news on failed producer Manuel Bornia. Headline Surfer has learned that Bornia is out as publisher of the sleek Floridian View Magazine.

The 24/7 Internet newspaper was told by two credible sources that Bornia is no longer running the magazine.

"He's been a disaster," one of the sources said, referring to recent monthly print issues either being late or not distributed at all. 

Said the other source: "He's no longer in charge. He's a consultant for the magazine. That's it."

The magazine was launched by Bornia in 2011, as "an elegant and relevant voice of reason that shares the stories our editors wanted to read in a publication that did not exist. In an age of instant information and electronic communication, it is the unrushed personal relationship you have with your favorite magazine that you look forward to on your terms."

The July issue did not circulate as a print magazine, but rather digitally, in stark contrast to Bornia's mission statement.

With Bornia's departure, Headline Surfer reached out to his apparent successor, Ramona Garrett, who did not return a telephone message left with one of the magazine's staffers. Bornia could not be reached for comment.

Bornia's other major project has closed its doors. The News-Journal is reporting in today's edition that the 2nd Street Public Market in Holly Hill has closed.

The published story stated in part: "The end of the market comes after several delays in the venture, coupled with the city pumping more than $1 million in tax-funded community redevelopment money into the facility."

Holly Hill City Manager Jim McCroskey told the News-Journal that he was notified Friday by Vanguard OmniMedia, Bornia's company, that had terminated its contract with the municipality. The last day of business was Friday at a city-owned building at 101 Second St.

Bornia's main claim to fame is the American Music Festival fiasco two years ago that led to the ouster of Daytona State College President Kent Sharples and the college owed $1.5 million from the Community Cultural Foundation. The CCF made up of prominent public figures such as Daytona Beach Mayor Glenn Ritchey, Volusia County Chair Frank Bruno and Halifax Health CEO Jeff Feasel and college board member John Tanner, the former state attorney.

Instead, Bornia was able to recruit Usher, the Jonas Brothers, Tony Bennett and Huey Lewis. The concert was a bust with dismal attendance, with dozens of vendors left unpaid, including the News-Journal. They were eventually paid for their services, but the college, which fronted the CCF the money to hold the concert was left with the $1.5 million debt on top of the $1 million-plus paid out to Sharples.

An emergency committee of the Community Cultural Foundation announced plans to recoup the money through fundraising, but it never materialized and the college later announced it would not sue. The fallout, though, stung with the college forced to raise tuition and the expense of a national search that led to the hiring of Carol Eaton in July 2011.

Bornia was an employee of DSC, but reported to the Community Cultural Foundation. Sharples inherited Bornia and several other employees when he agreed to have the college take over the News-Journal Center after the newspaper, which paid $13 million in naming rights, was sued by minority shareholder Cox Enterprises in federal court in Orlando. That led to nearly half the newspaper's 800 employees losing their jobs and a fire sale to a group headed by Michael Redding of Halifax Media.

Ritchey, Daytona's mayor was head of the Lively Arts Center, the News-Journal Center's precursor.

Ironically, Bornia still did advertising with the mayor and others through Floridian View.

Bornia's most recent fiasco was getting the Daytona Beach Area Chamber of Commerce to announce the magazine and chamber were putting on a huge candidate debate at the Ocean Center after debates were held by the News-Journal and Headline Surfer in advance of the Aug. 14 primary elections.

The Bornia-led debate never got off the ground. To avoid further embarrassment, the chamber contacted members individually that the debate was cancelled.

CASE NUMBER: 50-2016-CA-003264-XXXX-MB 
CASE STYLE: HSBC BANK USA NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, AS TRUSTEE FOR FIRST NLC TRUST 2005-4 MORTGAGE-BACKED CERTIFICATES, SERIES 2005-4 V ARCO-BORNIA, ELIZABETH M

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