Revisiting the case of attorney David Rodriguez.

Does everyone remember that attorney we talked about that was arrested in one of the Mortgage Fraud Task force's first case?  The attorney that was arrested was non other than attorney David Rodriguez of Miami.  In this case according to the arrest affidavit and the information filed by the state, Mr. Rodriguez was caught red handed officiating a crooked real estate transaction and went so far as to deal directly with an undercover cop then try to negotiate some sort of kick back for the seller of the property to cover any capital gains issues he may of had as a result of the inflated sales price for the home.  This seemed like a slam dunk case for the state, after all based on the what we see in the states case file, the Mortgage Fraud Task Force gave the case to the assistant state attorney on a silver platter.  I can only imagine the disappointment on the part of the task force members and the detectives who put this case together when the state attorneys office not only let everyone walk with a slap on the wrist and some probation, but then allowed the attorney that was arrested to plead out and from what it looks like get his record sealed.  Complete, total and utter FAIL!  I sincerely doubt this is was the intended outcome of one of the task forces inaugural cases.

There's another element to the David Rodriguez story though, unlike the other co defendants in his case, he has to answer to someone else, a higher power, The Florida Bar.  There were some pretty hefty allegations made by the police and the state attorneys office against the attorney, one has to ask, did the Bar know what was going on?  Remember the state alleged that the attorney paid off the sellers mortgage before the closing occurred among other things, isnt that in and of itself a serious trust account issue for the attorney?  I wonder if anything ever came of the mess this attorney was involved in, the allegations were serious enough, let's take a look and see if there's any disciplinary history for Mr. Rodriguez:

Look at that, no disciplinary history and still eligible to practice law.  GOOD FOR HIM!  I wonder what happened though, I've been told that it's not uncommon for the state attorneys office to work hand in hand with the Florida Bar when prosecuting an attorney suspected of committing a crime, was that the case here?  Was the Assistant State Attorney in this case as hard on attorney David Rodriguez as he was with the other attorneys that we've discussed?  Did the Bar know about the allegations that were made against Mr. Rodriguez?  Did the Bar conduct their own independent investigation into the allegations made against Mr. Rodriguez?  I wonder.  I also wonder why the prosecutor was so easy on the defendants in this case.  Very interesting.