Details, details, details...

Almost all of the cases that we've written about since the inception of our blog are paperwork intensive.  There seems to be mountains and mountains of documents in each case, either documents and exhibits that the state turns over as part of the discovery process or voluminous deposition transcripts that easily exceed several hundred pages.  In these instances it seems utterly impossible to get a proper handle on whats going on in these cases considering the seemingly insurmountable pile of paperwork that accompanies each case.  Yet to fully understand these cases, you have to go through these documents over and over and over again. 


There's been several instances to date where I've looked at a specific document dozens if not hundreds of times and have noticed nothing then somehow miraculously after looking at the document for months on end, something literally just jumps off the page is if it was outlined in neon lights.  This seventeenth century painting of an Italian piazza is a perfect example, at first glance there's nothing unusual about the painting...

Nothing strange going on there, just an old painting with some buildings and some people, you could walk by this painting a thousand times and never notice anything, that is till you take a closer look...

The minute you focus in on the painting, you realize there's something in the middle of the painting just in front of the tower so you squint and take another look then BAM...

There it is, right in the middle of the damn painting, TWO DOGS HAVING SEX!  Once you see the two dogs having sex, you realize that there's a crowd of people in the painting all watching what the dogs are doing.  Now when I see the painting, the dogs are the first thing I see and to think I've seen this painting for years and never noticed the dogs!


So what's two dogs having sex in the middle of a several centuries old Italian painting have to do with our blog?  Luckily for us, the Airways Auto Tag case has very little in the way of documents in the states case file, what little I've been able to find on my own outside of the criminal case file consists mostly of transcripts of an unemployment compensation hearings where the tellers that were accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars and subsequently fired from their jobs at the tag agency were simply looking to collect their unemployment benefits.  Luckily for us, the owner of the tag agency, Ileana Martinez de Castro, fought vehemently to deny these girls their unemployment benefits, her testimony during these hearings has turned into a treasure trove of information that I believe will ultimately be used against her if this case ever goes to trial.


According to the state and the allegations made against the tellers by the owner of the tag agency, the three tellers that were charged were accused of stealing money from the tag agency by accepting cash from the customers then after the clients left with their tags, the state alleges that the tellers would go ahead and void the transactions and pocket the money.  As I've mentioned before, the tellers have cameras and supervisors constantly monitoring them as well as keeping track of every dollar that the tellers take in.  At the end of every day, the tellers are required to fill out "closing sheets" which are basically an itemized inventory of every dollar that the tellers have at the end of the day when they close out their drawers.  Here is an example of a blank closeout sheet from the tag agency...

Simple enough and easy to understand, it's nothing more than a way for the teller to inventory the money in their drawer, itemize the various denominations, total everything up, sign and date it.  Then I suppose who ever does the bookkeeping then checks for inaccuracies then signs and dates it themselves.  


Now, lets move on to the tag agency owner's testimony regarding these closing sheets during the unemployment hearing specifically the close out sheet from the day the alleged thefts occurred, December 23, 2010...

Ms. DeCastro:  Okay, the paper that she turned in is on Page 11.  Page 11 is in her own handwriting.  And, she says that she put the wrong amount of the bill because, obviously, four $20 bills do not add to $200.  But the amount of money that she put on the right hand side add up to $14, 835.82; her handwriting which she signed and date, herself.  All we do is scan it.  The reason it has those lines on it is because we were making copies of copies, in order to do a closeout sheet; therefore, it looks like that.  But, we scan everything exactly the way they turn it in, their page. 

Huh?  What?  This excerpt of Ms. DeCastro's testimony shows a weird trait that she exhibits throughout all the unemployment hearing transcripts, she seems to ramble on at the slightest provocation.  I didn't think anything of the closeout sheet in question, till I read her her testimony for the third time.  Anyone who's every been to a deposition or a hearing of this nature is told by counsel again and again, simply answer the questions with a yes or a no, don't volunteer anything, keep your answers short and simple.  In this case all this talk about the scanning of these closeout sheets and "those lines" that she mentions that appear on the closeout sheets as a result of the scanning really got me wondering so I picked up the closeout sheet from December 23, 2010 and took a closer look to try to figure out what Ms. DeCastro was talking about.  Take a look for yourselves, as always, click on the image to enlarge...

First off, we notice at the top of the page, the fax header is from Duane Morris, LLP which we've learned is the law firm that represents the tag agency therefore authenticating the document as being a genuine close out sheet from the tag agency.  Now, as we just read, the owner of the tag agency mentions something about lines "looking like that", I can only assume that what Ms. DeCastro is referring to is the slight distortion in the lines because ostensibly as a result of the scanning process.  Once we blow up the closeout sheet, it's easy to spot the distortions Ms. DeCastro is talking about...

I went ahead and pointed out some of these distortions in in red in case you weren't able to spot them.  


After reading the transcripts, I was startled by Ms. DeCastro's willingness to ramble on, almost unprovoked.  I've learned over the years that no matter what the situation, if you give someone that's got something to hide enough rope, they're eventually going to hang themselves and in this instance Ms DeCastro didn't disappoint. Take a really good look at that closeout sheet from December 23, 2010 again and see if you see anything strange, for the astute among you it should be clear as day.  We'll discuss tomorrow...