LAKELAND | The owners of Exit Realty are suing their former accountant claiming he worked with his brother to extort more than $300,000 from them in return for not pursuing criminal charges.

Exit owners Bill and Susie Nicholas filed a civil lawsuit Wednesday against Stephen Hamic and his Lakeland-based accounting firm, Hamic Jones Hamic & Sturwold.

The lawsuit accuses Hamic of working with his brother, Mike, to extort $375,000 from Bill Nicholas by pursuing fraud charges against him with the State Attorney's Office.

The charges were eventually dropped.

Mike Hamic, an Exit partner, had made "numerous" threats in 2007 and 2008 he would pursue charges against Bill Nicholas and daughter Molly Wescomb "if he were not paid certain sums of money," according to the suit filed in Circuit Court in Bartow. In December he allegedly set the amount at $375,000 but later reduced it to $350,000.

Mike Hamic owns a 50 percent stake in Exit but left the firm earlier this year in the midst of an ongoing feud with the Nicholases, who are married. The civil lawsuit accuses Mike and Stephen Hamic of presenting false information to State Attorney investigators that lead to the arrest of Bill Nicholas and Wescomb, an Exit employee.

The Hamics and their lawyer, Sam Crosby of Lakeland, declined to comment for this story. Mike Hamic was not named in the lawsuit.

Bill Nicholas was charged in May with conducting a scheme from 2004 through 2008 in which he paid Wescomb more than $45,000 in salary and about $25,000 in benefits using company money. Wescomb was supposedly not working for Exit at the time.

The State Attorney's Office dropped the charges against Nicholas and Wescomb in July after new evidence ruled out criminal intent.

The Nicholases' lawsuit says Stephen Hamic abused his power as Exit's accountant and helped his brother mislead investigators using Exit's financial records. The suit claims Stephen Hamic knew Wescomb was legally employed by Exit.

"Bill and Molly were wrongfully arrested, booked into the jail and subjected to all the indignities of being labeled as criminals, and when the true facts were brought to light the State Attorney's Office quickly dismissed the charges," Bob Puterbaugh, lawyer for the Nicholases and Wescomb, told The Ledger on Wednesday. "I think there now needs to be a day of reckoning for those who caused this."

According to the suit, the feud between Mike Hamic and the Nicholases began in 2006 in a series of disputes centering around Hamic's "destructive lifestyle, his abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs, his arrest by the Lakeland Police Department for DUI, his resulting erratic conduct in his work at Exit Realty."

The Nicholases also claim Hamic was financially insolvent and was hit with a tax lien for nearly $72,000 in August 2007.

The Nicholases sought to remove Hamic from their business partnership and filed a civil suit against him in May 2008 before firing him in December.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday says Hamic retaliated by pursuing the fraud charges against Bill Nicholas and Wescomb, using financial records supplied to investigators by his brother.

Hamic told investigators Wescomb was not employed by Exit and was being paid by Bill Nicholas against his wishes, but the Nicholases contend Wescomb was still working in various capacities for Exit, sometimes from home.

The suit claims Stephen Hamic never alerted the Nicholases to any issue regarding Wescomb's employment and he concealed documents proving the payments were legitimate.

In addition, the lawsuit claims the Hamics worked to recruit former Exit employees "who would provide rumor and hearsay" supporting the fraud allegations.

The Nicholases' and Wescomb's suit seeks damages from Stephen Hamic and his firm for civil conspiracy to commit extortion, malicious prosecution and abuse of process.

[ Kyle Kennedy can be reached at kyle.kennedy@theledger.com or 863-802-7584. ]