Attorneys Steve Stoll and Stephen Orchard from the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case being investigated by the Florida Bar...

Due to the tropical storm last Friday that never came , we here in South Florida had an unexpected long weekend.  The Straw Buyer and family attended a couple of barbecues and kicked back, wifey had a bit too much to drink though...

Looks like the Florida Bar is investigating both the attorneys that were arrested in the $16mm Plantation Cops mortgage fraud ring.  From the AP article...

Steve Stoll, a politically connected Republican attorney in Fort Lauderdale arrested last month in a mortgage fraud case, is now under investigation by the Florida Bar.
Florida Bar spokeswoman Karen Kirksey declined to provide specifics except to confirm that Stoll and fellow lawyer Stephen Orchard, also indicted in the fraud case, are under investigation.
In June, a federal indictment detailed how a group of attorneys, police officers and mortgage brokers falsified documents to obtain $16.5 million in loans they used to buy and flip properties.
Stoll's attorney, Robert Nicholson, who has said his client is innocent, was unaware the Bar was investigating but wasn't surprised. ``The Bar as a matter of course opens an investigation anytime a licensed attorney is charged with a criminal offense.''
Stoll and his wife, Rebecca Stoll, a former North Broward Hospital District commissioner, are familiar names in Broward political circles. They have supported candidates in recent years, including Gov. Charlie Crist in 2006 and in 2009 and Bill McCollum in 2009, and raise money for the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science.
-- AMY SHERMAN

Uh oh, that certainly doesn't sound good for the lawyers involved now does it?  Throughout the course of our blog we've noticed that the Bar has moved at glacial speeds against the attorneys that have been charged with crimes, yet in this case they seemed to be moving quickly against these two.  What struck me as strange about this article was the following quote from Mr. Stoll's attorney...

`The Bar as a matter of course opens an investigation anytime a licensed attorney is charged with a criminal offense.''

Is that right?  If indeed that is the case, what happened with the attorney from the Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud Task Forces inaugural case, Attorney David Rodriguez?  You all remember him don't you?  This was the attorney that was charged with setting up an illegal home purchase where the buyer was getting tens of thousands of dollars from the closing without the lenders knowledge as well as paying off the sellers mortgage weeks before the closing actually occurred according to the state.  He was also accused putting the deal together with an undercover cop acting as the sellers accountant.  With those kinds of allegations, surely Mr. Rodriguez had some sort of investigation initiated by the Bar regarding his alleged involvement in this fraud, but as we mentioned before, there's no record of any discipline arising from this incident...

We're gonna take a closer look and see what we can find...