Murder, identity theft and a Mercedes...

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So what was that mysterious email about the other day?  From that email...

This man, Nalio Willliams is wanted for the murder of my friend.  I know it's a longshot but if ANYBODY recognizes him or knows where he is PLEASE let me know.  He shot a good man in the head multiple times for NOTHING.  My friend's 5 year old son, who he loved very much is going to miss him greatly.

Ok, let's start with a quick google search of Mr. Williams to see what we can find.  From CBS4 we get this story...

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – An arrest warrant has been issued for a Hialeah man who reportedly gunned down a Miami man in cold blood days before Christmas.
On December 22nd, Raimundo Modia drove his high-end luxury Mercedes to a West Park warehouse on SW 57th Terrace in hopes of selling it. What Modia, 34, didn’t know was that the prospective buyer, 35-year old Nalio Williams, was a career criminal, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
During the meeting between the two men, Modia was shot several times during the meeting and died at the warehouse. He is survived by a five-year old son.
Williams left a stolen white Toyota Tundra at the shooting scene. The tag on that vehicle was registered to a man in northern Florida whose identity had been stolen, and the vehicle itself was registered to another man in Winter Garden. Modia’s Mercedes was discovered the following day abandoned in Miami Gardens.
A first degree murder warrant has been issued for Williams who detectives believe may still be in the area.
The sheriff’s office said Williams past arrests have been for identity theft and fraud so he may be using an alias.

Ok, from this article we've learned that Mr. Williams shot someone named Raimundo Modia in the head after they met at a warehouse somewhere in Broward county to discuss the sale of a luxury car.  We're also told that shooter has been arrested in the past for Identity theft and fraud.  Interesting.

Now, let's see what we can learn about Mr. Raimundo Modia.  From Sunbiz we get the following...

Interesting.  From what we can glean from Sunbiz, Mr. Modia was in the mortgage business as well as the exotic car rental business.  Wait a minute, what are the chances?  Haven't we discussed this exotic car rental business before?  Let's focus in on one particular business that Mr. Modia was involved with, Elite Luxury Rentals, which just happened to be owned by a fellow named Bryan Guarch.  We've written about Mr Guarch before, for those of you who don't remember, perhaps this press release from the U.S. Attorneys office will refresh your memory...

United States v. Bryan A. Guarch, et al., Case No. 09-20627-CR-Moreno.
On July 23, 2009, thirteen (13) defendants were charged in a 15-count Indictment for their participation in a mortgage fraud scheme that resulted in approximately $4 million in fraudulent loans. Charged in the Indictment were defendants Bryan A. Guarch, 29, Richard Pi, 27,  Edwin Garcia, 30, Carlos Martinez, 29, Wayne Bermudez, 29, Oscar Quintero, 28, Sunsy Garcia, 29, Ryan Barouh, 27, Jason Cuza, 30, Anthony Silverio, 26, all of Miami, Rafael Jaramillo, 32, of Hialeah Gardens, Mario Estrada Mora, 25, of Miami Beach, and Vanessa Negron, 27, of Boiling Springs, South Carolina. According to the Indictment, defendants Guarch and Pi organized the scheme and identified eight properties to be used to defraud mortgage lenders. Guarch and Pi used defendants Edwin Garcia, Rafael Jaramillo, Carlos Martinez, and Wayne Bermudez, to recruit  straw buyers to submit fraudulent loan applications to mortgage lenders. Among the straw buyers recruited in this way were co-conspirators Oscar Quintero, Mario Estrada Mora, Sunsy Garcia, and Vanessa Negron.After submitting fraudulent loan applications to the lenders, Pi and Guarch paid-off loan officers, defendants Ryan Barouh and Jason Cuza, to facilitate the approval of the loans. Guarch and Pi caused the title company closer, defendant Anthony Silverio, to approve and submit to the lender a fraudulent HUD-1 Settlement Statement with an inflated purchase price. In an effort to conceal the fraud, Silverio provided a second HUD-1 Settlement Statement to the sellers reflecting the actual, much lower purchase price of the property. At closing, Guarch and Pi kept more than $1 million in loan proceeds, representing the difference between the inflated purchase price and the price actually paid to the seller for the property. After closing, Guarch and Pi used those loan proceeds to pay off their co-conspirators and to fund their lavish life styles. After each of the closings, the straw buyers defaulted on the loans, causing each of the properties to go into foreclosure and resulting in possible losses to the lenders of more than $2.6 million.The Indictment includes charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and substantive wire fraud. Mr. Sloman commended the investigative efforts of the Federal-State Mortgage Fraud Strike Force, with special commendation to the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Miami-Dade Police Department, and the State of Florida Office of Financial Regulation. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter A. Forand.

Oh boy.  So here we have Mr Modia who was in the mortgage business as well as in the exotic car rental business along with a guy named Bryan Guarch who was federally indicted for running a massive multi million dollar straw buyer mortgage fraud scheme.  Now comes Mr. Williams who then allegedly shoots Mr. Modia in the back of the head who's got a history or identity theft and fraud.  Interesting.

Am I the only one that thinks this case is about something other than Mr. Modia wanting to sell his Mercedes?  I wonder what the cops think?  Perhaps paying a visit to Mr. Guarch over in federal prison may answer some questions...

Mysterious email...

So I'm getting ready to bang out my next "Airways Auto Tag Agency" story when my the email notification on my phone goes off and I get a strange email with this photo...

I've had tons of emails in the past asking me to look at a specific case or write about a story that someone thought was important but what the hell am I supposed to do with this?  Especially since the man who allegedly shot this guys "friend" is still on the loose?!


I guess spending a few hours to see what we can dig up can't hurt, right?  We'll report back tomorrow...

Miami's best blogs, setting the record straight.

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I've gone over the Miami New Times article several times over the last week where we were named Miami's third most important blog.  While I greatly appreciate and am honored with the recognition, I feel that there are some errors in the article that need to be straightened out, beginning with the title they bestowed on me...

Persian New York born...

While that sounds great, it's also incorrect, I wasn't born in New York, I was born in Iran and have been in the U.S. since 1974.  No big deal there.

Prosecutors' Enemy

I find that a bit harsh and inaccurate.  First off, I'm not a prosecutors enemy, while I'm the first to point out when a prosecutor in a case that we're writing about makes a mistake, I'm also first to applaud a prosecutor that's doing a good job, IE the prosecutors in the Veldora Arthur mortgage fraud trial.  The particular prosecutor that I consider my enemy, William J. Kostrzewski, is only labeled as such because of his downright unethical and immoral behavior, his targeting of myself and my family and the fact that when he was faced with the real facts regarding the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case, he still chose to ignore them and go forward with a case that he knew was deeply flawed.

The idea: undermine the case against his spouse.  Hatami zeroed in on the two men responsible for arresting Delaila.  Miami Dade Police Det. Jorge Baluja and assistant state attorney William Kostrzewski. 

Not really.  The idea wasn't to undermine the case against my spouse but instead the idea behind the blog was two fold, first to provide some measure of therapy by giving myself a way to channel the anger I had against the police and the state for arresting my wife on totally bullshit charges.  Secondly the idea behind the blog was in some way shape or form to expose the way we were lied to by the prosecutor, just days before my wife was arrested, once the case was explained to the prosecutor in detail and after my wife passed a polygraph test, the prosecutor assured us that all was well and that he wouldn't move forward against her.  That was all well and good then the son of a bitch went ahead after reassuring us that everything was fine and arrested her, even worse she wasn't given a chance to surrender herself and being the scumbag prosecutor he is, he made sure the police barged into her office midday on a Friday and hauled her off in cuffs.  The real motivation behind this whole mess?  To make sure the MDPD's mortgage fraud task force was able to make a high value arrest to commemorate the one year anniversary of the task forces first arrest.  Wonderful, fuck up someones life, destroy a family just so you can have your fucking headline and hopefully use that to move yourself up the ranks to a statewide or maybe even a nationwide task force.  How did that work out for you Mr. Kostrzewski?  The third and most important purpose of the blog was to clearly show that the state's victim, the man who claimed his identity was stolen which started the whole case, Bernardo Barrera, was indeed lying and was an integral part of the fraud.  We proved beyond a reasonable doubt that indeed Mr. Barrera was an active participant in the fraud that was the basis for the states case, even going so far as to hire our own handwriting expert to prove that his signatures were all over the "fraudulent" documents, we'll talk about that in detail next month.  Despite all we've done to prove Mr. Barrera's complicity in this case, the state still refuses to go after Mr. Barrera when even the attorney handling the foreclosure that arose from this fraud after examining the documents associated with this case concluded that he was involved with this fraud, here's an email from that attorney...

There you have it, an attorney that works on behalf of Attorney's Title who represented Citi Mortgage reviewed the documents that we presented after which he concludes that Mr. Barrera was involved in the fraud that ultimately lead to the arrests in this case, yet here we are nearly four years later and the state still hasn't taken action against Mr. Barrera.

As far as the rest of the New Times article is concerned, the details really don't matter.  I feel like commenting on my background isn't really necessary as disposition of the states previous cases against me speak for themselves.  The rest of it?  Writing about all these other cases, finding corruption in local government, etc, I guess that all came with the territory.  What really bothered me about some of these other cases, all of which were more egregious than the one that my wife was charged for, was that none of them were as heavily publicized as my wife's case, in fact the biggest story of them all, former City of Miami Assistant Veldora Arthur's federal mortgage fraud indictment, wasn't even publicized till I wrote about it!  I never understood the tremendous disparity between these monster cases that never made the news versus the case my wife was charged in that was plastered all over the media.

So, am I done now?  Not yet.  There's still a tons of stories I have to tell about my wife's case that I've held back on, everything from plea deals that were never disclosed to the people that by law were entitled to know about them to prosecutor Kostrzewski ordering one of the defendants girlfriends to wear a body wire in their attorneys office so he could listen in on them discussing the case he was prosecuting.  Oh, and how can I forget, in the heat of the battle, after I laughed at prosecutor Kostrzwewski in open court, he went ahead and sent a subpoena to the company that hosts my domain name in order to reveal my identity!  We'll cover that soon as well.

With all that said, I'd like to thank the folks at the New Times and Francisco Alvarado for bestowing this honor on us.  I'll do my best to live up to being "one of Miami's best blogs".  Back to our regular fare tomorrow...

The Miami New Times ranks us among Miami's best blogs!

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Check the story here.  Can you believe it?  Our humble little blog has been ranked among the best and most prestigious blogs in Miami!  Thanks to all our loyal readers that helped us along the way as well as those of you that are constantly sending us tips.  I'll do my best to keep up and try my best to keep turning out stories that no one else sees fit to print!  I'll do a little explaining over the next few days regarding who I am and why I went about things the way I did.  Until then, thanks to Frank Alvarado and the New Times for recognizing us and congrats to our fellow bloggers who made it on the list, it's an honor to be counted among you.

Saving Veldora's pension...

Our sources tell us that there is a meeting taking place today within the City of Miami whose sole objective is to figure out how to save convicted fraudster and former City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur's pension.  Ms Arthur was convicted and sentenced for her role in a massive multi million dollar mortgage fraud scheme last year, since then there's been strong opposition within the ranks of both the fire department and the City of Miami to Ms Arthur being able to collect her pension.

What makes today's meeting all the more interesting is that I'm told that former City of Miami Police Chief and City Manager Donald Warshaw is keeping a close eye on the proceedings, for those of you who don't remember Mr. Warshaw, this story from the Miami Herald sums up his situation...

Former Miami Police Chief Donald Warshaw is not entitled to his six-figure annual police pension, forfeited when he was convicted of diverting $70,000 from a charity for his personal use, a state appellate court ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 decision, a Third District Court of Appeal panel of judges backed last year's decision by Miami's Firefighters & Police Officers Retirement Trust to stop paying Warshaw's pension of about $128,800 a year.


Warshaw, who retired as police chief to become city manager in 1998, avoided a conviction for using public office to steal public money as part of his plea deal with the U.S. attorney's office. Such a conviction would automatically have forfeited his pension, according to Florida statues.

Interesting, if Ms. Arthur somehow manages to keep her pension despite her federal fraud convictions, it's going to set a dangerous precedent.  If she gets to keep her pension then by default, wouldn't Mr. Warshaw be entitled to keep his pension as well?  For that matter, wouldn't any city or county employee who lost their pensions due to a criminal conviction be entitled to get their pension benefits back?  

We'll keep an eye on this situation and report back as soon as we learn anything.  More tomorrow on the Airways Tag Agency boondoggle.

Remembering Dr. King as well as an ugly reminder of the lions at our City's gate...

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Once again, it's the third Monday of January, the day we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  There's plenty of places on the internet that do a better job of honoring the man than we possibly can, considering the state our nation finds itself in today, I think this quote from one of Mr. King's speeches is most appropriate...

“the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/15/v-print/2591162/remembering-mlk-safe-icon-or-radical.html#storylink=cpy

Consider that quote next time you see something wrong going on around you and decide not to do anything about it, perhaps something like what I found littered all over the streets this past weekend...

The pro casino groups were out in full force this weekend plastering Little Havana with this kind of bullshit.  With the kind of money they're putting into swaying the public opinion on getting gambling into our region, is there any doubt that they'll succeed?  Considering the level of voter apathy in South Florida, unless something drastic happens, this is as close to a sure thing as you can get.

The Airways Auto Tag Agency boondoggle...

Earlier this week we discussed the arrest of a number of tellers from a local tag agency that I happened upon accidentally.  The thread that tied the tag agency story to one of our mortgage fraud stories was that they both shared the same detective from the Miami Dade Police Department, Detective Jorge Baluja.  Our assertion is that as long as Detective Baluja is involved, there's more than likely going to be some kind of misconduct or at the very least a totally botched investigation.


The first step in uncovering the good Detective's misdeeds was getting the arrest report for the tellers that were charged from the tag agency.  We took a trip down to the courthouse yesterday and came up with the following, as always click on the image to enlarge...

Essentially what the Detective Baluja is alleging is that the tellers at this auto tag agency would process your transaction, collect the fees and applicable taxes, give you your tag, title or registration, then they'd turn around after you left at some point and cancel the transaction and pocket the money that they had collected.  Considering the size of this tag agency, does it stand to reason that this kind of theft would be going on right under the owners noses without anyone finding out?  The arrest report alleges that there was nearly $20k missing over a period of four months, considering that this is a highly regulated business that works within a strict inventory of license plates and registration decals, how could $20,000 worth of these items go missing without anyone noticing?  Sounds like bullshit to me.


So what's the big deal here?  Why should any of us be interested in a simple case like this?  Be patient, on Monday we'll discuss who's behind this little tag agency as well as the strings that were pulled to get these tellers arrested...