What's the damn rush Detective Baluja?

One thing that has struck us as strange throughout the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud story was how hastily the case was put together.  From what we can see in the states file, things were moving along at a conservative pace and then all of a sudden at the very beginning of October 2008 it seemed like someone lit a fire under the states ass, in fact Detective Baluja openly bragged about being up till 4 am on the date of the arrests getting the arrest affidavit ready for the judge to sign.  Why the damn rush all of a sudden?


While we were down at the courthouse the other day going through the case file, we noticed something that struck us as very strange, take a look...

That's the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case file, notice that according the dates stamped on the folder the warrants were issued on October 3, 2008 and the arrests were made the same day, in fact the arrests were made mid morning on October 3.

Let's look at that time line again...

1. Detective Baluja is up till 4 am on October 3, 2008 preparing the arrest affidavit.
2. Arrest warrants signed by Judge Julio Jimenez sometime during the morning of October 3, 2008.
3. Defendants arrested by mid morning October 3, 2008.

Does that sound kosher to you guys?  Certainly doesn't to us.  You get the feeling these arrests had to be done on October 3?  What's the damn rush?  We've asked several different law enforcement officers about how this went down and if they'd ever stayed up till four in the morning writing an arrest affidavit, believe it or not, not a single one of them ever had.  So why the rush to make these arrests happen?  Based on the time line above, doesn't it seem like someone was insisting that the arrests happen on Oct 3, no matter what?  Why?  Was it a deadline imposed on the Detective by the Mortgage Fraud Task Force?  Maybe a self imposed deadline by Assistant State Attorney Kostrzewski?  Who knows.  We have our own hypothesis as to why this case was hastily thrown together at the last minute and why the arrests HAD TO BE MADE on October 3, 2008.  To understand why we have to take a closer look at the Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud Task Force's case number one's arrest date, state case number F07-34446...

See the date outlined in red?  Need we say more?  Anyone wanna guess who the prosecutor was on that case?  Isn't that fantastic?  People getting railroaded just so the task force can make headlines on the anniversary of the arrests in their first case.  Way to go guys.