The Straw Buyer

Another look at the auto tag agency story...

2012-01-30T09:58:00.001-05:00

Before we go deeper into the Airways Auto Tag Agency story that we first mentioned earlier this month, let's try to get a basic understanding of what the case is about. The allegations are as follows...

Customer comes into the tag agency and for the sake of our argument, purchases a new license plate for their car and pays the sales tax on their newly acquired vehicle. To make things easy, let's say that the entire transaction costs a total of $1,000.

At this point the teller at the tag agency takes the $1,000 from the customer, which by the way is almost always cash or a company check assuming it was coming from one of the dealers that the tag agency works with, prints out the required paperwork and receipts from the state computer system, hands the customer a license plate as well as a new vehicle registration and decal. So far so good right?

According to the police, at some point in the day, the tellers that were charged pocket the money then go and void out the transactions on the tag agencies internal accounting system therefore according to the arrest affidavit shorting the tag agencies proceeds to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (aka DHSMV) which regulates the tag agencies.

Simple enough right? You come in, pay your money, pick up your tag, registration, title, etc, the teller does all the required paperwork on the state and the tag agencies internal computer system then at some point after you leave, the tellers would void the transactions on the agency's internal system, pocket the money which would therefore leave a shortage with the state at the end of the day.

Real simple right? Let's now take a look at a specific day that the police allege that one of these dirty tellers pulled this scheme, specifically, December 18, 2010. From the arrest affidavit...

Ok, so according to the arrest affidavit, on December 18, 2010 this teller processed six transactions totaling $8,175.90 and then two days later said teller voided these transactions and at some point between these two days the defendant pocketed a little over $8,000. Now to fully understand these allegations, lets take another look at the tag agency where all this was alleged to have occurred...

What you can't see from this photo is that the place is only about ten feet deep and has three tellers. Now, take into account that the business is highly regulated by the state and there is a strict inventory of license plates, blank titles, blank registrations, etc. You start off the day with a certain inventory of items and you finish the day with all those items as well as the money in your drawer fully accounted for. Also take into consideration that large dealer transactions like the ones that occurred on December 18, 2010 are invariably paid for with a check from the dealership. Now, tell me how anyone with a modicum of common sense could believe that there could possibly have been $8,000 in cash missing from this tiny tag agency in one day without anyone above the tellers knowing about it?

Anyone with an once of reason in their head would be confounded by these allegations, that is, anyone but our favorite MDPD Detective, Jorge Baluja...

Tomorrow we'll propose what our theory of this case is and see what you think.

Murder, identity theft and a Mercedes...

2012-01-26T08:41:00.001-05:00

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...

2012-01-24T08:26:00.000-05:00

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.

2012-01-23T09:15:00.001-05:00

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!

2012-01-19T08:07:00.000-05:00

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...

2012-01-18T08:53:00.000-05:00

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...

2012-01-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

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...

2012-01-13T09:08:00.000-05:00

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...

My tag is expired!

2012-01-11T09:04:00.001-05:00

What a f-ing hassle. My damn tag is expired which means I've once again procrastinated, missed the online renewal deadline and I'll have to schlep over to the local tag agency, fight the lines and wait to get a new decal for my miserable vehicle. Fun, fun, fun.

As far as I can remember there were two types of tag agencies that you could go to, one was the state or county owned tag agency where they'd hand you your new tag or decal on the spot while with the others, you'd drop off your paperwork then go back the next day to pick up your new tag or decal. Unbeknownst to me, it seems as if all the tag agencies now can print your decal or give you a tag right on the spot, so I figured if I'd find the smallest out of the way tag agency as possible I could be in and out in no time. I happened upon this tiny place almost purely by accident...

Fantastic, a tiny tag agency in a forgotten part of town right behind Miami Jai Alai. I figure I'll be in and out of there in no time. Little did I know that when I'd walk in the place was going to be PACKED! CRAP! So here I am sitting in this god forsaken hell hole, two tellers working behind the bullet proof glass with at least a dozen or so impatient and angry people standing shoulder to shoulder waiting to get their crap and get on their way.

I end up waiting for nearly an hour till my turn came up but while I was waiting I struck up conversation with several of the people waiting. It turns out that one of the reasons that this place was so packed was because it services a number of the car dealers in the area, one of the people I was talking to was a runner for one of the local dealers. I noticed that the guy had about eight or ten files that he needed to get processed so I figured if I could get on the guys good side, perhaps he'd let me jump in front of him rather than make me wait another hour.

So here I am in this place that seemed more like the county jails drunk tank than a tag agency, trying to chat up the misfit in front of me while doing a cost/benefit analysis of whether it was worth driving with an expired tag rather then waiting in line for my turn when the guy in front of me drops a bombshell. He says...

You know the motherfuckers here were all arrested a while back right?

I quickly snapped out of my daze and asked him WTF? He went on to tell me that the cops had done a raid on this tag agency and ended up arresting three of the tellers behind the counter for stealing money. He also went on to tell me that the raid was run by the same cop that had busted in on the dealership that he worked at. I asked him if he remembered anything about the cop, description, name, etc. He goes on to tell me that he'd never forget the cop because during the raid on his dealership, he ran the receptionists name and found that she had a suspended license and arrested her while she was sitting behind her desk! So I ask, what was this guys name to which he responds...

Some jackass named Baluja...

LOL!!! How the hell could this be? Our very own MDPD Detective Jorge Baluja?

That's it, our day is fucked. We all know by now if Detective Dumbass Baluja is involved then somethings fucked up. I'm off to the courthouse to do some digging, more tomorrow...

An unbelievable story...

2012-01-09T08:14:00.001-05:00

I stumbled upon a story over the weekend that made me nearly shit myself.

A story of one of the most powerful people in South Florida government getting caught with their hands in the state's cookie jar only to have their friends in law enforcement turn the investigation around and frame three innocent people to take the fall. Although this story has nothing to do with mortgage fraud or any of the other types of fraud that we've discussed in the past, it's got everything in the world to do with corrupt practices at both the Miami Dade Police Department and the Miami State Attorneys office. The icing on the cake is that the cop at the center of this case is none other than our favorite ex mortgage fraud investigator, Jorge Baluja.

Stay tuned

Prosecutorial misconduct, the gift that keeps on giving...

2012-01-06T09:03:00.001-05:00

Just when you think you've run out of crap to write about comes another instance of flagrant prosecutorial misconduct, the icing on the cake here is that we're already familiar with some of the key players yet somehow the Miami Herald forgot to mention their names. From the Herald article...

Two MIA “fuel farm” defendants get new trial
By DAVID OVALLE
Two defendants in the Miami International Airport fuel-farm corruption case deserve new trials because a judge failed to give proper instructions to the jury, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
Cliff Berry Inc., and the company’s former environmental director, Jeffrey Clint Smith, were convicted at trial in December 2008 of first-degree grand theft. The accusations: They pilfered huge amounts of fuel from the airport’s storage depot.
Smith had been free on bond while awaiting the decision. “This news in the new year is extremely welcome from him and his family,” Smith’s attorney, Michael S. Pasano, said. “He had always insisted on his innocence.”
The Third District Court of Appeal also ruled Wednesday that Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola failed to quickly hold a hearing to question prosecutors about a key witness who changed his testimony.
The indictments were part of a far-reaching probe that uncovered several racketeering schemes at MIA. In all, more than 20 defendants pleaded guilty.
As for the company and Smith, investigators alleged that company trucks were supposed to haul away wastewater but drove off with jet fuel instead, and later sold it to yacht owners.
At trial, defense attorneys insisted their clients believed they had the “good faith” right to haul away the contents of a fuel-farm tank.
Scola refused defense attorneys’ request that the jury be given instructions outlining the “good faith” defense.
The Third DCA ruled Wednesday she should have allowed the jury instruction because “the evidence at trial was sufficient to suggest the good faith theory.”
Smith was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The company was ordered to pay $1.23 million and was barred from having any government contracts. The company’s former president, Cliff Berry II, was acquitted.
Another legal issue revolved around defendant Brian Schneir, a former supervisor at ASIG Fueling, another company that prosecutors said aided in the theft of the jet fuel.
Schneir pleaded guilty to organized fraud and agreed to spend two years in prison in return for testifying against Smith and Cliff Berry Inc. However, at trial, Schneir changed testimony he gave in a deposition about the dollar amount of fuel stolen and the date the scheme began.
Appellate lawyers argued that Miami-Dade prosecutors failed to quickly inform the defense of the change in Schneir’s testimony. Third DCA Judges Richard J. Suarez and Barbara Lagoa said Scola should have automatically conducted a hearing to see if prosecutors violated rules regarding turning over evidence to the defense.
A third appeals judge, Leslie Rothenberg, disagreed, saying the two defendants were convicted “by overwhelming evidence.”
Scola later ruled that prosecutors did not violate any rules. After prosecutors moved to revoke Schneir’s plea deal, saying he lied before testifying at trial, Scola gave him 12 years in prison.

Ok, so besides the judge screwing up and not allowing the jury instructions to outline the "good faith" defense, there's one other critical problem, the states main cooperating witness changed his testimony before the trial, problem is that the prosecutor knew that the witness had changed his critical testimony yet decided not to tell the defense attorneys about it! From the article...

Appellate lawyers argued that Miami-Dade prosecutors failed to quickly inform the defense of the change in Schneir’s testimony. Third DCA Judges Richard J. Suarez and Barbara Lagoa said Scola should have automatically conducted a hearing to see if prosecutors violated rules regarding turning over evidence to the defense.

RUT RO! So the prosecutor knew after his key witness was deposed that his testimony had changed before trial yet he forgot to let the defendants know and in essence covered this critical fact up? Who could this unnamed prosecutor be? Why would the Herald write this story accusing the prosecutor of misconduct yet leave out the guys name? Any guesses as to who this guy is? Perhaps this photo will help jar your memory...

Richard Scruggs

That would be none other than our favorite ex public corruption prosecutor Richard Scruggs! You all remember Mr. Scruggs from his stellar performance during the Michelle Spence-Jones mess don't you? Throughout that debacle Mr. Scruggs hid evidence, coerced witnesses and downright lied to witnesses about evidence he had in his possession in order to get them to say what he wanted. So the question that begs to be asked is why the hell did the Herald not name Scruggs in the article? We were able to identify the mysterious prosecutor in this case only after reading the actual appeal, if you have the time, check it out...

Prosecutorial Misconduct Cliff Berry Inc and Jeffrey Clint Smith vs the State of Florida

Carey-Schuler

Now, who's this other player in this fuel farm corruption case that goes unnamed in the Herald article? That would be none other than former county Commissioner Barbara Carey-Schuler, the same ex commissioner that played a key role in both getting City of Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones indicted then through changing her testimony also helped get her case dismissed. For those of you with a good memory, you might remember Carey-Schuler as the commissioner that was buddy buddy with that crook Oscar Rivero, who was practically a fixture in her office, that was responsible for stealing millions of dollars that were meant for public housing only to build himself a mansion in South Miami. Funny how her name keeps coming up in this high profile public corruption cases yet somehow she never gets charged?

Regardless, just another instance of a dirty prosecutor who's resorted to obtaining convictions by any means necessary even if it means breaking the very laws he swore to uphold and another black eye for our local state attorneys office. Oh well...

Following up on Reid Welch's motion to disqualify City of Miami assistant attorney George Wysong...

2012-01-05T08:39:00.000-05:00

Right before the Christmas break we discussed the ongoing feud and subsequent restraining order between City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff and Coconut Grove gadfly Reid Welch. On December 23 attorneys for both parties appeared in court to argue whether or not City of Miami assistant attorney George Wysong should be disqualified from the proceedings because of his role within the city, once again, from his very own bio on the city website...

Mr. Wysong serves as the Police Legal Advisor for the City of Miami Police Department. In that capacity, he handles matters which affect the Police Department, and provides counsel and advice to the Chief of Police and his staff, litigates contraband forfeiture cases, prepares legal bulletins for dissemination to the sworn police officers, provides advices and counsel to the City's Emergency Operations Center in times of emergency. In addition to those duties, Mr. Wysong also reviews contracts and agreements relating to the Police Department and drafts legislation relating to quality of life issues.

As we stated before, the conflict created by Mr. Wysong representing Mr. Sarnoff and the City of Miami Police department is blatantly obvious. From our November 23 blog post...

So Mr Wysong is the City of Miami police liason, from his bio says his job is to "handle matters which affect the Police Department." If that's the case, why was he representing Sarnoff at this hearing? In fact, based on his bio, shouldn't he have been attending this hearing on behalf of the City of Miami police department who should have arrested Mr. Sarnoff for his assault on Mr. Welch? Doesn't this constitute a serious conflict of interest for Mr. Wysong?

Based on all of the above, you would think the judge would have ruled in Welch's favor and disqualified Wysong, correct? Not so fast, check the judge's motion that we received yesterday...

Reid Welch Motion to Disqalify George Wysong Denied

To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. Just another day in Miami I guess.

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time...

2012-01-03T09:16:00.000-05:00

That's an easy enough proposition, isn't it? When you're considering participating in some nefarious activity, go ahead and do a quick cost benefit analysis and determine if you can handle the jail time for the crime you're about to commit. Simple. I'm sure we've all posed that question to ourselves at some point or another, how much money would justify going to jail for? Maybe a million bucks? Perhaps half a million for a year behind bars? Who knows.

That brings us to the mastermind behind the first mortgage fraud caper we discussed on our blog, none other than John Arthur Romney. For those of you who aren't acquainted with Mr. Romney, back in 2008 Mr. Romney masterminded a mortgage fraud scheme where he purchased a home then a week or so later through the use of a straw buyer, flipped it for a tidy $400k profit. Not bad for a weeks work, right? Problems arose for Mr. Romney when his straw buyer claimed that he had nothing to do with the transaction and in fact his identity was stolen in the commission of this fraud. We have our doubts about those claims from the alleged straw buyer as the evidence seems to indicate that he was indeed involved in the fraud. Regardless, back in February of 2011, Mr. Romney took a plea and admitted to his role in the fraud and subsequently was sentenced to 30 months in prison along with another ten years worth of probation. In our humble opinion, that seemed like a slap on the wrist considering that after a few minutes playing around online we were able to find several other frauds that Mr. Romney was involved in, not to mention the fact that we're told that Mr. Romney had told law enforcement and the prosecutors about tons of other frauds that he had conducted.

That's all well and good, at least 30 months behind bars is better than what almost all of the other fraudsters that the heralded Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud Task Force prosecuted got, we were unable to find anyone that got anything more than probation despite millions of dollars worth of fraud that they were found guilty of! No worries, at least the state got Mr. Romney's case right, that is until a couple of nights back when I was checking in on Mr. Romney's whereabouts in the state prison system. From his department of corrections page...

The department of correction's page states that Mr. Romney is at the Opa Locka W.R.C. and that his "Current Custody" is "community". I did a little digging and found out that "W.R.C." stands for "Work Release Center". WTF?!

Isn't that wonderful? Mr Romney is out on the street! He gets to run around all day then come back to a tax payer funded bed at night! SWEET!!!

So is that it? Admit to stealing nearly $400k and all you get is less than 10 months behind bars? Let's go back to the title of today's post...

"Don't do the crime if you can't do the time..."

With that in mind, let's do a quick cost benefit analysis. Let's assume that he stole $400k and that he was behind bars for exactly ten months for ease of calculation. That works out to $40k per month or approximately $1,300 per day. How many of you guys our there are making $1,300 per day? Considering our current economic climate, I'd venture to guess that not many of us are doing so. Remember, this doesn't even take into consideration the other real estate/mortgage frauds that Mr. Romney has admitted to. Add those numbers in and his average take per day could go up ten fold.

I'll leave you with this, do you guys believe nine months behind bars was an adequate punishment for defrauding a bank out of $400k? $40k per month while being fed and clothed by the state doesn't seem like such a bad deal after all, does it?

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T17:35:00.000-05:00

I've been struggling with internet connectivity problems all week only to find out yesterday that my entire neighborhood was offline. With that said, have a Happy New Year folks and thanks to those of you who've been following our little blog over the last few years. 2012 is going to get off to a great start as a number of cases that we've been following are about to go to trial and most importantly, the alleged victim of our first mortgage fraud story, Bernardo Barrera, will be making an appearance on the stand as a states witness this January 17th. I can't wait. Till then, have a Happy New Year...

Trying to kick back and take it easy for a few days...

2011-12-27T08:55:00.000-05:00

In the mean time, have a happy holiday...

Send an email, GO TO JAIL!

2011-12-22T08:46:00.003-05:00

Reid Welch

We're all aware of the ongoing feud between City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff and Coconut Grove resident Reid Welch which last month culminated in Sarnoff getting a restraining order against Reid. For those of us that have been following the story, we knew it was only a matter of time before Sarnoff figured out a way to get Reid arrested. Well, last week that's exactly what happened, Reid allegedly sent Mr. Sarnoff an email and next thing you know according to the word on the street, six City of Miami cops (unconfirmed) showed up and arrested Reid. Here's a copy of the arrest report...

Reid Welch Arrest Report

Does anyone see the problem with this arrest report? I mean other than the fact that it states that the poor guy was arrested for simply sending an email? Take a look at the text of the report...

On November 21, 2011, the defendant was served with an injunction for protection. The terms of the injunction dictate that the defendant shall not contact the listed victim directly or indirectly. In addition, the court order also stipulates that the defendant shall not contact the listed victim via e-mail or any in any other manner. On 12-14-11, the victim discovered an electronic mail that was sent by the defendant to his e-mail account. The e-mail is clearly identified with the defendant's name and his e-mail address information. The content of the electronic mail leads the victim to a specific blog in which a clear message is sent to the victim. The nature of the message is directly sent to the victim and it clearly describes prior episodes and specific information that would entail and describe the defendant's previous encounters with the victim. The defendant's actions constitutes a violation of the injunction and his behavior serves as in irritant to the victim who has endured substantial emotional distress from a defendant who is unwilling to cease the harassment despite the active court order that prohibits him from engaging in this type of behavior. The defendant was arrested.

Now, honestly, I don't mean any disrespect to the Detective that supposedly wrote that arrest affidavit, but I sincerely doubt that this affidavit was authored by anyone other than an attorney. Am I the only one that thinks so? Does that sound like a cop talking or a veteran attorney making a closing argument? Could this arrest report have been written by none other than City of Miami attorney George Wysong who not only represents the City of Miami Police but in this case somehow represents City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff against Reid Welch as well?

This brings us to another point, back in November, we alleged that City of Miami attorney George Wysong's representation of Mr. Sarnoff against Reid Welch in the restraining order hearing was clearly in our oppinon a conflict of interest, from that blog post...

So Mr Wysong is the City of Miami police liaison, from his bio says his job is to "handle matters which affect the Police Department." If that's the case, why was he representing Sarnoff at this hearing? In fact, based on his bio, shouldn't he have been attending this hearing on behalf of the City of Miami police department who should have arrested Mr. Sarnoff for his assault on Mr. Welch? Doesn't this constitute a serious conflict of interest for Mr. Wysong?

Now, this isn't the first time that I've found Mr. Wysong wearing two hats, there are several other instances where Mr. Wysong has found himself in places where he shouldn't be where there is a clear and undeniable conflict, we're going to have to wait a couple of weeks before we can reveal those stories. Regardless, if this was any other city, I'd be shocked and appalled at Mr. Wysong's behavior but it's Miami so it's par for the course!

Jason Wandner

Well, apparently we're not the only ones that believe that there is a clear conflict of interest as a result of Mr. Wysong representing both the City of Miami's Police department and representing Mr. Sarnoff on a matter that nothing to do with his capacity as a City Commissioner. Mr Welch's attorney, Jason Wandner, filed this motion with the court to disqualify Mr. Wysong from the restraining order matter, take a look...

George Wysong Motion to Disqualify

Clearly this is a textbook example of a conflict of interest. The motion speaks for itself, I find this part most damning...

4. Moreover, the respondent intends to call certain police officers from the City of Miami Police Department as witnesses in the instant matter. Attorney Wysong is the lawyer for those "independent" witnesses. Representing both, a party to a case and an adverse witness, is inherently a non-waivable conflict of interest, especially if the "independent" witnesses' testimony is skewed toward the Plaintiff due to their relationship with his lawyer.

Even better...

5. Moreover, the undersigned sent the defendant to the City of Miami Clerk to obtain certain documents in his defense in the instant matter, and needless to say, the clerk directed him to Mr. Wysong. In other words, the opposing counsel is now aware of my trial strategy and has the authority to block access to public records.

DUH! What the fuck is this shit Mr. Wysong?

Honestly? In what alternative universe is this nonsense supposed to fly? Perhaps this may only make sense within the City of Miami Attorneys office and in Mr. Sarnoff's crooked mind but in the real world this is straight up bullshit. If my guess is right, what we have here is a well coordinated conspiracy between Mr. Sarnoff and Mr. Wysong to railroad Mr. Welch. From the suspicious arrest report, which in my opinion was not written by anyone other than Mr. Wysong, to this monkey grab ass bullshit where Mr. Wysong is representing the City of Miami Police department and also representing Mr. Sarnoff in a private matter before the court, this is a City of Miami Mob style inside job. We'll have to wait and see what the judge thinks of this matter...

Responding to some of the blog comments regarding former City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur's sentencing...

2011-12-21T08:46:00.001-05:00

I'm working on a very important story regarding some unethical activity between City of Miami commissioner Marc Sarnoff and the City of Miami city attorneys office. We'll have the story ready to go for tomorrow, in the mean time, let's look at some of the comments left over the last few days on our blog posts regarding former City of Miami assistant fire chief and convicted fraudster Veldora Arthur.

Let's start with this comment...

Anonymous said...: Is she going to lose her city pension??? I really hope you follow this up. She need to lose this as well...

I believe she will lose all or part of her pension simply because she conducted most of these schemes while on City time while using city fax machines and in some instances even city letter head.

Anonymous said...: If the city has an ounce of morality left in its corrupt conscience, it will stip her of everything. I did not see a restitution amount for ripping off 11 milion. If she continues with her pension, this will be merely a slap on the wrist. Corruption and greed at its worst!!!!

There will be restitution, there's going to be a separete hearing in February just for that purpose.

Anonymous said...: This was a scheme that involved many condo buildings, not just the one in Wellington. She may not have been involved in more than one of them, but the other people indicted along with her, or in similar connected schemes, were involved in more than the Wellington frauds. The series of defaults, after the straw buyers got their money, caused other condo owners to have to pay increased condo fees and property values to go down significantly. So, yes, disgorgement of all money she collected is appropriate.

Correct. According to the prosecutor, the frauds in this case were just a minor smattering of the many frauds that Ms. Arthur was involved in, we're going to look at least one other fraud that she was involved with but wasn't charged for soon, perhaps after the holidays so that we can highlight how indiscriminate the government is when it comes to charging people based on their ability to garner headlines. As to the second part of the comment, the judge mentioned the same, even going so far as to say that people like Ms. Arthur were the root cause of the real estate meltdown and because of their bogus inflated property values and subsequent busting out of the properties that we are where we are today with most homes underwater.

Anonymous said...: This convicted felon should lose her pension. She committed crimes WHILE ON DUTY. Send a message. Crime does not pay. What about the $120,000 she got while suspended?

That comments speaks for itself and I couldn't agree more.

Anonymous said...: If she lose her pension or not it won't benefit you! My sister & our family are moving forward & you all should do the same. My sister is paying her time to society & I don't think there is nothing else to talk about.

I'm sorry for the position you and your family find yourself in today as a result of the crimes that your sister was convicted of. I take no joy in seeing the family suffer because of a series of poor decisions that Ms. Arthur made, but at the end of the day she is where she is and nothing can change that. I take issue with your statement though when you say...

If she lose (sic) her pension or not it won't benefit you!

In fact, you are wrong when you say that by losing her pension "it won't benefit you". See, a significant portion of her pension is paid by the taxpayers, the same taxpayers that paid Ms. Arthur an exorbitant six figure plus salary when she was on city time and simultaneously conducting these fraudulent transactions that had nothing to do with her job at the fire department. For the taxpayer to have to continue paying her pension after she committed these crimes is a further insult to the citizens of the City of Miami. I'll make you a deal, how about we go and randomly pick out a handful of citizens of the City of Miami and let's ask them what they think. Are you up for that?

Anonymous said...: Chief Warshaw, the ex-police chief lost his from the City of Miami so she should lose hers too. Any bets she won't lose it...

Agreed.

Anonymous said...: The Straw Buyer, You keep pushing it she will lose her penison...Thank You so much....

That's a bit ridiculous isn't it? I'm the least of her worries! If you were in the courtroom during the sentence, did you take a look around and see who else was there? There were a few members of the upper management of the City of Miami FD that had no love lost for Ms. Arthur who were all to vocal about how the rank and file felt about her tenure at the FD and how they felt about her pension. Once again, let's not forget the citizens of the city who are appalled at the amount of money she was making on the job while they're working their asses off to make a fraction of what she was making at the FD. While Ms. Arthur may have taken for granted the incredible pay and gold plated benefits she was getting at the taxpayers expense, most of us would kill to have the same kind of compensation so it's that much more appalling to see someone who had the world at her feet to get involved in this kind of mess. Don't blame me if she loses her pension, she's got no one to blame but herself for that.

Now, till tomorrow, go back and read this blog post regarding our esteemed City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff and local gadfly and Coconut Grove resident Reid Welch. This is going to get interesting.

BREAKING NEWS! Veldora Arthur gets sentenced

2011-12-16T13:20:00.006-05:00

As the title states, former City of Miami assistant fire chief and convicted fraudster Veldora Arthur was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison this morning after a five hour hearing before Judge Patricia Seitz (check out her bio, WOW!) that started at 8:30 this morning. In addition to the 57 months, once released she'll have to serve an additional 36 months of probation.

I was in utter disbelief as I sat through this hearing, even after being found guilty and having been incarcerated for several months, Ms. Arthur both through her own statements and through her attorney, Bruce Lehr, who gave a somewhat less than stellar performance, were still making excuses and were both pleading ignorance regarding her role in the fraud. At one point U.S. Attorney, Armando Rosquete brought up another instance of mortgage fraud that she had committed in a separate straw buyer scheme that she was involved with but not criminally charged for. In this instance Ms. Arthur orchestrated the scheme and put up the money (approximately seventy four thousand dollars) for the down payment, a couple of days after the closing (we'll discuss this case next week in detail) Ms. Arthur received the money back with an additional ten thousand dollar profit. To his credit, the prosecutor eloquently described the transaction and provided the court with all the relevant documents regarding the down payment that she put up for the straw buyer, wire transfer authorizations, bank statements, etc all detailing the approximately $74,000 being wired out of her account and then the subsequent $84,000 being wired back into her account days later (the original $74k + $10k profit). When the judge asked Ms. Arthur's attorney to explain this suspicious banking transaction, he explained that his client knew nothing about the real estate transaction nor the wire transfers both in and out of her account. As ridiculous as that may sound, the judge actually went so far as to say that if Ms. Arthur didn't authorize the wire leaving her account and since she had no idea who had authorized the wire that it must have been a phantom or a ghost that did so!

Are you fucking kidding me? $74,000 leaves your account without your knowledge or your consent then a few days later $84,000 comes back in and you don't even think to question it? WTF?

Judge Patricia Seitz

The worst part of this hearing was bringing her family and friends into the courtroom and having them dragged through this mess. Somehow Ms. Arthur and/or her attorney thought it was a good idea to have her emotionally fragile 15 year old daughter before the court to make a statement. I can't begin to tell you how horrible I felt watching this poor girl stand before the court and have to be subjected to seeing her mother wearing khaki prison clothes and with shackles around her legs. This was truly and utterly unnecessary.

I have to really question what Ms. Arthur and her attorneys were thinking when they decided to take this case to trial rather than take a plea, the government had a mountain of incontrovertible evidence against her, most in the form of damning mortgage documents that she couldn't deny. I suspect if she would have plead out that she could have ended up with something in the neighborhood of 24 months rather than the 57 months she ended getting.

Regardless of what Ms. Arthur did to get herself into this position she finds herself in today, I have to tell you, seeing her family suffer through this hearing made for one of the saddest days of my life. I pray that Ms. Arthur and her family get through this horrible ordeal and get on with their lives.

We'll discuss this hearing and its outcome at length next week.

Veldora Arthur's attorney tries to tell the court why she shouldn't be put away for 57 to 71 months...

2011-12-14T09:26:00.000-05:00

Veldora Arthur

Our favorite former City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief and convicted fraudster Veldora Arthur is about to be sentenced in federal court for her role in a multimillion dollar mortgage fraud scam. As we discussed a few months back, after Ms. Arthur was found guilty for her role in this nefarious scheme, she quickly dropped her former attorney, Larry Handfield, and retained prominent criminal defense attorney Bruce Lehr to handle the sentencing phase of her case. Now her new attorneys come before the judge and give a litany of reasons why the court shouldn't slam her with a 57 to 71 month sentence as dictated by the federal sentencing guidelines. Let's take a look at the many reasons her attorneys offer for Veldora to get a more lenient sentence.

Reason #1, she's really not that guilty...

On September 30, 2011, defendant ARTHUR was found guilty of three (3) counts out of a five count Superseding Indictment. Specifically, ARTHUR was found guilty of one (1) count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and two counts of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§1349 and 1341, respectively.

Ok, I guess things could have been worse? After all, she was found guilty of three counts rather than five, so she's not as guilty as she could have been?

Reason #2, she's really not that bad of a person and after all...

...it is respectfully submitted that ARTHUR’s history and characteristics (which include
25 years of service as a firefighter), family circumstances, and need to avoid unwarranted sentencing disparity, warrant a downward departure and/or variance from the sentencing guidelines. Prior to her arrest in connection with this case, ARTHUR, who is an extremely religious woman, had never been accused, arrested, or convicted of any crime.

I wonder how all that factored in when she was getting kicked back hundreds of thousands of dollars when she was closing on these fraudulent mortgages?

Reason #3, she's a hard worker...

After graduating from High School in 1982, ARTHUR enrolled at Miami Dade Community College where she took paramedic and EMT courses in the hopes of becoming a firefighter. In 1986, she was hired as the first female firefighter for the City of Miami Fire Department. For more than 25 years, ARTHUR was employed by the Fire Department and held numerous positions including Executive Assistant to the Fire Director and, ultimately, Assistant Fire Chief.

Yet somehow after all that hard work and rising to the command staff of the City of Miami Fire department and making close to $300k+ per year, it still wasn't enough.

Reason #4, she did real good in school...

ARTHUR simultaneously attended Barry University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in public administration in 2001.

Fantastic.

After obtaining an excellent education and providing 25 years of honorable service and dedication to the City of Miami Fire Department, ARTHUR was relieved of her duties as a result of her arrest in this cause.

I beg to differ, she wasn't relieved of her duties, she was simply sent home for nearly a year while on the tax payers dime. Let me know where I can sign up for the same deal. On another note, if she was so dedicated to the fire department, why was she working as a mortgage broker, real estate fraudster, credit repairer, etc? That hardly seems like someone who's dedicated to the Fire Department. Perhaps some of her coworkers down at the Fire department would like to chime in and tell us just how dedicated she really was...

Reason #5, she's worried her son may not be able to get a job...

Additionally, it is significant to note that Arthur’s son expects to graduate as a paramedic in December of next year. Because of the publicity surrounding his mother’s case, he feels it may difficult to find employment in South Florida.

And why exactly should that concern the court? Perhaps Ms. Arthur should have taken all that into consideration before she decided to engage in fraudulent activities?

Reason #6, she's not feeling so good...

As noted in the PSI, Defendant ARTHUR is a 46 year old woman with an extensive history of medical conditions, including Sjogren’s Syndrome, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, two herniated discs in her lower back1, hypertensive heart disease, and mitral valve disease.

Ok, and? Is being healthy a prerequisite for serving the appropriate prison term? She seemed pretty healthy when I saw her running around in Larry Handfield's office. Again, I have to wonder, was she brought into the fraudulent closings in a wheel chair?

Reason #7, she went to the feds first...

It is respectfully submitted that ARTHUR’s voluntary disclosure to authorities was an act consistent with someone who was not aware that her actions were illegal. It was not a subsequent remedial measure taken by a defendant who is facing imminent prosecution. At the time ARTHUR disclosed her actions and the actions of others to her attorney and to the Government, there was no pending investigation against her. ARTHUR’s candor, which ultimately subjected her not only to criminal liability but to the loss of her freedom, warrants a downward departure from the sentence suggested by the advisory guidelines.

No kidding? To me this sounds like someone that's simply won the race to the prosecutors office, not an "act consistent with someone who was not aware that her actions were illegal" but instead the actions of someone who knew they broke the law and was trying to save their own ass.

In summary...

Defendant VELDORA ARTHUR respectfully requests that this Honorable Court sentence her below the advisory guideline range based on her history and characteristics, 25 years of service as a firefighter, family circumstances, and unwarranted sentencing disparity. Additionally, Defendant ARTHUR respectfully requests that a downward departure be granted based on her medical condition and voluntary disclosure of the offense to government authorities.

Come on now. I guess her attorneys have to give it a try considering the pile of money they must have gotten from Veldora. I can understand all these wonderful reasons why the court should throw the book at her, but what I can't understand is if all of these things were true, why the hell did Ms. Arthur put herself in this position to begin with? I'll be honest with you, if I was in her shoes, I would have been perfectly content making over $300k+ per year working over at the FD. Easy administrative work, take home car, the best medical coverage money could buy as well as a fantastic pension package. Ms. Arthur finds herself where she is today, behind bars, for one reason, GREED.

Through this amusing narrative and these wonderful excuses her attorneys have provided the court, she's hoping to get her sentence reduced to something in the 24 to 30 month range. I personally hope the court throws the book at her and gives her the maximum sentence of 71 months, if nothing else to send a message to anyone in her former position or anyone else in a cushy government job thinking about doing something as ignorant as she did and in turn throwing away an unreal job that took her 25 years+ to get.

An update on the case of disbarred attorney Sally Sawh...

2011-12-13T09:09:00.000-05:00

Some of you may remember the story of disbarred attorney Sally Sawh who the Florida Bar accused of misappropriating over two million dollars of her clients money that she held in her law firms trust account, we discussed her story several times over the last few years ( here, here and here ). The Florida Bar did their own investigation and found that there were several millions of dollars worth of clients funds missing from her firm's trust accounts, there findings can be found here in this report...

Sally Sawh Disbarment Sally Ann de La Casa

Shortly after this report was filed on October 3, 2008, Ms Sawh was arrested and charged with Grand Theft for charges stemming from this report, after three years of delays, her criminal case finally went to trial last week. To be honest, I had all but forgotten about Ms. Sawh until we received these two comments on previous blog posts last night...

Today this woman was found UNAMOUNSLY INNOCENT by a jury. So all of the above is simply based on someone's wild imagination or a possible stalker.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Sally who?":

UNANAMOUS Jury verdict 100% innocent 12/12/11.She testified so all of this nonsense of her fledding was just that NONSENSE AND MAKE BELIEVE but I guess made good reading.

Take a bow for all looking like fools! And the french fled the US on Friday when their money laundering was made public to the IRS.

Also Growing Leaders is an AUDITED Foundation so also all of that make beleive about the Foundation IS JUST THAT, MAKE BELIEVE! Shame, shame , shame.

Hope Straw Buyer has the courage to now APOLOGIZE for creating a blog on this woman BASED ON PURE FICTION!

These comments were obviously left by none other than Ms. Sawh from her hotel room at the Hilton in downtown Miami. While we have to congratulate Ms. Sawh and her attorneys for convincing the jury to find her "not guilty" of grand theft, I'm puzzled about this bit...

She testified so all of this nonsense of her fledding (sic) was just that NONSENSE AND MAKE BELIEVE but I guess made good reading.

I guess the forensic accountants who conducted the investigation for the Florida bar must have been nuts when they concluded that there was over two million dollars that had gone missing from her firms trust accounts? Since Ms. Sawh actively reads and comments on our blog, perhaps she'd like to tell our readers why in addition to the missing two million dollars that was the subject of her criminal case, the bar audit also found another nearly $800,000 missing from her accounts as well?

I don't know, perhaps it's all fiction. Maybe those nasty people over at the bar had an axe to grind with Ms. Sawh, maybe she just decided to give up her license to practice law for shits and grins as well, who knows, perhaps Ms. Sawh is innocent after all and all this fuss about money missing was just a big misunderstanding.

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

The bad news doesn't seem to stop for Veldora Arthur...

2011-12-08T08:58:00.000-05:00

Just when you think things can't get any worse for former City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur who was recently found guilty of a bevy of federal charges stemming from her involvement in a number of real estate and mortgage scams, it looks like there's a chance that they will. While she sits in federal custody in downtown Miami awaiting her sentencing, the government has come before the court and is asking the court to impose a stiffer penalty on her because of an instance of alleged obstruction of justice.

As one of Veldora's bond conditions, she was not allowed to contact anyone who the government designated as a witness in her criminal case. True to form, it seems like she did just that right after she was indicted, even worse she did so in an email that the witness immediately turned over to the prosecutors...

DUH! Especially when it clearly states on her bond conditions that she can't contact a government witness except through her attorney!

So why was Veldora so anxious to contact this witness? It turns out that this witness owned the company whose name Veldora used to create fake proof of employment documents for the fraudulent mortgages that she obtained for the commission of the frauds she was found guilty of. From the government's motion...

Ms. Smith provided this e-mail to the government during its trial preparation. A bit of background on Ms. Smith is appropriate. As this Court will recall, the fake employment on the loan applications that the defendant signed in this case was Gateway Associates, LLC (“Gateway”). Gateway was a company owned and operated by Ms. Rosalind Smith. Ms. Smith testified that the she knew the defendant, that they talked about starting a business by the name of Financial Solutions, LLC and that Ms. Smith had no other relationship with any other defendant in this case. Obviously, based on the fact that Ms. Smith was the sole owner of Gateway, Ms. Smith was the critical witness who could testify that the defendant never worked for Gateway thereby establishing that the defendant misrepresented her employment and income on the loan applications.

Further, she attempted to persuade Ms. Smith that her “signature was forged on some documents and I was mislead about the validity of the investment deals.” Id. In an effort to buttress her claims, the defendant even attached to the e-mail a polygraph report that she allegedly undertook through a polygrapher who the defendant hired and paid. The defendant concluded the e-mail by stating that the polygraph report “confirm[ed] [her] position.”

Here, the defendant unlawfully contacted a witness in this case in violation of this Court’s bond order and conditions. The witness was a critical witness, which the defendant attempted to influence by, among other things, attaching a polygraph-examination report that purported to prove in some allegedly empirical way that she was telling the truth.

If you're going to do something this stupid, why the hell would you do it in a manner that could be traced like an email? How about having someone else go talk to the witness? Or how about saying nothing at all? Considering the government has identified this person as a witness, you know that they're already talking to her and have more than likely scared the shit out of her, there's nothing you're going to say that's going to persuade her!

The prosecutor sums up this instance of Veldora's stupidity brilliantly at the end of the motion...

Plainly, the defendant’s actions demonstrate—at a minimum—that she has little respect for this Court’s rules and, consistent with her overall conduct in this case, views herself as someone who is above the rules of fair play, fair dealing and honesty.

Exactly, this is the same cavalier attitude that she's exhibited during her tenure at the City of Miami Fire Department and the same "I don't give a fuck" stance she's taken throughout the commission of her crimes all the way through till the very end her federal trial. Once again, I have to say to the prosecutors, especially Mr. Rosquete, well fucking done. You guys hit this one out of the park.

In case you missed it...

2011-12-05T09:08:00.000-05:00

Throughout the inception of our blog, we've watched cases developed where people have been prosecuted for as little as simply lying on their mortgage applications or as much as being involved in multi million dollar mortgage fraud schemes. Time and time again we've watched prosecutors determined to put people, no matter how small their rolls were in these schemes, behind bars regardless of the tactics that they have to use, perjury, fabricating evidence, coercing testimony, threatening defendants families, etc. You would think based on what we've seen the government do in their quest to punish those involved in these financial crimes that they'd go after the banks with the same zeal, as we've seen though, that simply hasn't been the case.

To this day there hasn't been a single criminal prosecution of a single person from the banks, the same banks that caused the real estate and economic meltdown. Sixty Minutes did a segment on just this topic last night that really nailed it. Take the time in case you missed it and watch through the whole segment...

Part 1

Part 2

What gives folks? Can anyone give me a single reason why the government has refused to go after the real culprits behind our real estate and financial crisis that has brought our country if not the world to it's knees? Think about what the bankers behind this mess did, it's not too different than what the government has gone after borrowers for, yet the government refuses to nail these guys. WTF?

A rare glimpse into the selection process for the next City of Miami police chief...

2011-12-01T08:58:00.000-05:00

.

As we mentioned yesterday, a selection committee been assembled to pick out the next City of Miami Police Chief, among those on the selection panel is none other than City of Miami Fire Chief Mo Kemp. That's the same Mo Kemp that was rumored to be former City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief and convicted mortgage fraudster Veldora Arthur's love interest. Regardless, today we get a rare glimpse of Chief Mo in action while helping select the next Police Chief...

I guess the guy in the suit is the next Police Chief!

Guess who's going to help decide who becomes the next City of Miami Police Chief?

2011-11-30T09:02:00.000-05:00

I just about fell out of my seat when I heard who's going to help pick the next City of Miami Police Chief, from the Herald article...

Ten candidates have made the list of finalists to become Miami’s next police chief, following the spectacular firing two months ago of disgraced former Chief Miguel Exposito.
Among the contenders: a retired high-level state police special agent, several prominent former Miami police command staffers and the man who replaced Exposito in an interim role.
A selection committee headed by Miami-Dade Police Director Jim Loftus will begin interviewing finalists Wednesday, and will continue next week.

So far so good, I have the utmost respect for the Miami Dade County Police Director, James Loftus, he's alright by me.

The finalists are: Adam L. Burden, Thomas W. Cannon, Frank G. Fernandez, Michael J. Gugliotti, Rafael P. Hernandez Jr., Roberto Hylton, Manuel Orosa, Amos Rojas Jr., Gerald Speziale Jr., and Louis A. Vega.
Earlier this month, the selection committee picked the finalists from 71 applicants. Nearly 50 had already submitted their applications before Exposito was fired; his contract had been set to expire at the end of the year.
A sharply divided city commission voted to fire Exposito on Sept. 12. City Manager Johnny Martinez had suspended the ex-chief six days earlier for insubordination, saying Exposito overstepped his authority by moving forward with administrative demotions the manager had explicitly placed on hold.

We all remember that circus don't we?

The list of finalists features several candidates that are well known in South Florida law enforcement circles.
Orosa, considered a candidate before Exposito was named chief, has headed the department in an interim position. Burden and Cannon, former Miami assistant police chiefs, retired after Exposito demoted them and a slew of others in December 2009.
Fernandez is the former deputy chief under Chief John Timoney. Vega, a former assistant chief under Timoney, also served as the police director in Camden, N.J.
Rojas recently retired as FDLE’s regional special agent in charge after eight years in the post. Hernandez, a former Miami-Dade police officer, served as chiefs of police in Sweetwater and most recently, North Miami Beach.
Gugliotti is the longtime chief of police in Waterbury, Conn. Hylton, the former police chief in Prince George’s County, Md., is listed as law enforcement advisor to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Speziale is the former sheriff of Passaic County, N.J., who later became the deputy superintendent of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority.

Blah, blah, blah...

The selection committee is made of Loftus and Addy Villanueva, now the special agent in charge of FDLE’s South Florida office; Hugo Barrera, the special agent of Miami’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives...

Sounds good up until here...

...and Maurice Kemp, Miami’s fire chief.

WTF!?

Chief Mo Kemp

Maurice Kemp, the City of Miami Fire Chief is going to help pick out the next Police Chief? This would be the same Maurice Kemp who sent his former assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur home collecting over $100k while under federal indictment! The same Veldora Arthur who was rumored to receive preferential treatment throughout her career because of her alleged personal relationship with Chief Kemp? This guy should be looking for a job himself rather than sitting on a committee that's going to pick out the next police chief!

Committee members will conduct the interviews with five people appointed by city commissioners to ask questions an provide input. But only the four committee members will pick the top five finalists.
From those choices, Manager Martinez will select the next chief.

Another bullshit dog and pony show. There is no doubt in my mind that Mayor Regalado and his cronies have already picked interim police chief Orosa to be the next police chief, what we're seeing here with this selection committee is a sham proceeding to make it look like Orosa was chosen through a fair and equitable selection process. Hopefully I'm wrong but somehow I doubt it.

Former City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur was paid $120,000 while under federal indictment waiting for trial!

2011-11-29T08:15:00.000-05:00

Veldora Arthur

That's right! While federally indicted mortgage fraudster Veldora Arthur was sitting home out on bail awaiting trial, she picked another $120k from the City of Miami for doing absolutely NOTHING! From Melissa Sanchez's excellent article from El Nuevo Herald via Google translate...

The City of Miami paid more than $ 120,000 to the Deputy Chief of the Fire Department, Veldora Arthur, waiting at home to be prosecuted for mortgage fraud, even though a rule municipal states that non-union employees should be suspended without pay or transferred when they are accused of a crime.
From February to September, Arthur had to stay home from 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. I could only go out for a lunch break and had to call this office twice a day.

Sorry to hear that Melissa, I don't even get to go out for lunch...

Roberto Suarez, president of the firefighters union, said he did not understand why the City does not reassigned to Arthur while awaiting trial. Arthur was convicted of three counts of fraud on September 30. He was eventually dismissed on October 5.

"Why pay you to do anything when you can put to work"? Suarez said. "Some days? Maybe. Do some weeks? From time to time. But what months? I know of another similar case. "

Not sure what he's saying, I guess Google Translate isn't perfect...

On 3 February, the Federal Attorney's Office charged Arthur and four other people to participate in a mortgage fraud of $ 11 million. Arthur was arrested on February 11 and released the same day on bail of $ 120,000.

The rule states since 1998 municipal non-union employees accused of a crime shall be suspended without pay. Employees cleared of charges should be reinstated to their jobs with back pay. If desired, the administrator can assign these employees to other tasks while waiting for their day in court.

Unionized employees are not subject to the rule, due to different agreements between management and unions. For example, according to a 1989 agreement, firefighters may receive paid leave in such cases. However, Suarez said that in most cases these unionized firefighters are reassigned to other duties.

Arthur ceased to be syndicated by assuming a high administrative position for more than a decade. At the time of his arrest was deputy chief in charge of payroll and quality control.

According to Maurice Kemp, head of the Miami Fire Department, Arthur had been able to recover its previous position of lieutenant, which is covered by the union. If they had, would have decreased his salary of more than $ 184.000. In addition, a pension of $ 167,000.

According to Chief Mo Kemp? Wasn't that Veldora's boyfriend?

The mayor of Miami-Dade County, Carlos Gimenez, who was administrator and former Miami fire chief, said Arthur could top having lowered to its previous non-administrative position, so that was protected by the union.

After the arrest of Arthur, his superiors took no action. Kemp said he had been evaluating the charges since 12 February.

"Because Arthur had been out of the office on leave, using their personal days for all days but one February, there was an urgency to reach a decision on their status," Kemp wrote in a recent e-mail to El Nuevo Herald.

On 21 February, blogger The Straw Buyer, was the first to write about the case. The next day, the local press started asking questions to Kemp. At that time, Kemp wrote a memo to Arthur allowing you to continue in office even restricting their access to funds these days departamento.En Kemp met with city administrators to determine what to do with Arthur. Both the then manager, Tony Crapp Jr., as the then chief financial officer, Larry Spring, and others involved in the decision said they preferred not to comment on the case. Johnny Martinez, the current administrator, as the Department of the City Attorney, referred questions to Kemp.

On March 2, Spring Kemp sent an email in which Arthur ruled that separate out their duties with pay.

"This is based on our previous conversations and a review of the rule," wrote Spring.

According to Giménez, administrators can exercise their discretion in applying the rule.

"Right, wrong, indifferent, they came to a decision," he said. "Did you follow politics? Yes, because they have that discretion. "

Beverly Pruitt, Director of Employee Relations of the City, said he did not have records of employees who have been placed under license with or without pay because of an indictment.

Suarez said many firefighters believe that Arthur was treated favoritism. He said the media attention on the case determined that perhaps sent home.

LOL! Would that be the media attention that we caused?!

"There are many positions to which they could be assigned as being in charge of the 911 call center," said Suarez. "Apparently, someone in the administration of the City does not want to deal with the drama of her in the office."

Kemp said he was aware of the growing media interest, but felt that did not influence the decision.

That's not what I heard MO!

Arthur also took 125 hours of accrued vacation leave in excess of $ 11,000. During the trial, used three-week vacation. Mayor Tomas Regalado said he wants the Office of the City Attorney investigate the issue to see if it can recover all the money paid to Arthur.

"Having been found guilty, she should return the money," said Regalado.

Arthur remains jailed in Miami while awaiting sentencing on December 16. He has hired a new lawyer.

What? Here we go again with the idiots from the City talking about clawing back hundreds of thousands of dollars only after the money had already been dolled out! What a bunch of shit. I don't know what's worse, the Mayor's bullshit reaction about Veldora picking up $120k for sitting on her fat ass at home or the fact that once again to get real news we have to turn to the Spanish language El Nuevo Herald rather than the English language Miami Herald. FUUUUUUUK!

Conflict anyone?

2011-11-23T09:07:00.000-05:00

By now all of you here in the City of Miami must be familiar with the ongoing feud between long time Coconut Grove resident Reid Welch and City of Miami commissioner Marc Sarnoff which culminated in Mr. Sarnoff violently attacking Mr. Welch a few weeks back. Our friend Al Crespo covered the story, here is the Police incident report where Mr. Welch is clearly identified as the "victim"...

That's all well and good until Mr. Sarnoff's wife decided to serve Mr. Welch with a restraining order...

Ok, whatever. Now this is where things get interesting, on Monday Mr. Welch had to appear before a Miami circuit court judge regarding this restraining order where the judge continued the case till January 6, 2012. Mrs. Sarnoff was represented by an attorney named Jay Solowsky while Mr. Sarnoff was represented by a City of Miami attorney named George Wysong, this is where things get a little interesting. Let's take a look at Mr. Wysong's bio from the City of Miami website...

Mr. Wysong serves as the Police Legal Advisor for the City of Miami Police Department. In that capacity, he handles matters which affect the Police Department, and provides counsel and advice to the Chief of Police and his staff, litigates contraband forfeiture cases, prepares legal bulletins for dissemination to the sworn police officers, provides advices and counsel to the City's Emergency Operations Center in times of emergency. In addition to those duties, Mr. Wysong also reviews contracts and agreements relating to the Police Department and drafts legislation relating to quality of life issues.

So Mr Wysong is the City of Miami police liason, from his bio says his job is to "handle matters which affect the Police Department." If that's the case, why was he representing Sarnoff at this hearing? In fact, based on his bio, shouldn't he have been attending this hearing on behalf of the City of Miami police department who should have arrested Mr. Sarnoff for his assault on Mr. Welch? Doesn't this constitute a serious conflict of interest for Mr. Wysong?

Now, this isn't the first time that I've found Mr. Wysong wearing two hats, there are several other instances where Mr. Wysong has found himself in places where he shouldn't be where there is a clear and undeniable conflict, we're going to have to wait a couple of weeks before we can reveal those stories. Regardless, if this was any other city, I'd be shocked and appalled at Mr. Wysong's behavior but it's Miami so it's par for the course!

On another note, for those of you that have been following my story regarding the "body wire at attorney's office", things are about to get a lot more interesting. It seems as if the attorney whose privileged conversations were recorded at the behest of assistant state attorney Bill Kostrzewski isn't too happy about those recordings being made...

Meanwhile back at the City of Miami...

2011-11-17T09:09:00.000-05:00

Forgive me folks, I've been sick as a dog and haven't been able to attend to the blog over the last couple of days. While we're doing our best to recuperate, take a look at our friend Al Crespo's site where he's been discussing how the City of Miami somehow managed to miss it's payroll a few weeks back. Considering the overwhelming majority of employees over at the city aren't fat cats making six figure plus salaries, most of the folks over there are hardworking people living paycheck to paycheck on menial salaries, one can only imagine how devastating it must have been for them to have missed a paycheck.

Considering how many employees must have been ticked off about not getting paid and the financial turmoil the city is in, does City Manager Johnny Martinez's choice of vehicles to drive to work give you any kind of indication about his mindset? Take a look at Mr. Martinez's ride...

Nice. While the city is in financial turmoil and the budget is being balanced on the backs of the city's employees, the City Manager rolls into work in a $100k+ BMW. Martinez's choice of vehicles only tells me one thing...

Who cares whether or not Martinez has a $100k+ car or not, but why take it to work when you're asking the city employees to make tremendous sacrifices in order to balance your budget? Even worse after you've managed to screw up and missed paying them? Couldn't he have had someone give him a ride or take a city vehicle over to City Hall? I've always been told it's all about appearances, especially when you employee people who make less than you. Why in the world would you want to flaunt a vehicle like this that's worth three or four times more than the majority of your employees make in a year? Like I said, it just seems like the people in the upper echelons of the City of Miami just don't give a fuck.

Like it never happened...

2011-11-15T02:30:00.000-05:00

Stephen Orchard

You all remember attorney Stephen Orchard, don't you? Mr. Orchard was one of the two attorneys that were federally indicted as part of the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case who on the eve of trial was given a sweetheart deal by the prosecutors and sent on his way. Let's not forget that Mr. Orchard was accused of committing among other things conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice for his part in the over sixteen million dollar mortgage fraud scheme that the feds labeled "Operation Copout". I'm not sure how, but somehow this evening I stumbled upon Mr. Orchard's law firm's website and couldn't help but wonder what's happened since the government cut him loose from the criminal case. From the looks of the website, Mr. Orchard seems to be doing just fine, but I wonder, what happened to the investigation into Mr. Orchard's involvement with the alleged frauds involved with the Plantation cops case? A quick glance at Mr. Orchard's bar page reveals no disciplinary actions...

That's all well and good for Mr. Orchard but what about his former boss and fellow defendant attorney Steven Stoll who was also federally indicted for his role in "Operation Copout", we know the government chose not to retry him after his first trial ended with a mistrial, but what about the Florida bar? From Mr. Stoll's bar page...

David Rodriguez

You guessed it, NADA. What's the big deal you ask? No big deal I guess, I just wonder, why is there such great disparity in how the organization that regulates and disciplines attorneys handles different cases? Those of you who've been following our blog for a while surely remember attorney David Rodriguez who was the target in one the Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud Task force's first cases. The cops had Mr. Rodriguez dead to rights, after all he was negotiating the crooked deals with an undercover cop who just happened to be one of the members of the Task Force! Surely by now nearly four years after his arrest and subsequent plea, Mr. Rodriguez must have been disciplined by the Florida bar, right? Once again, from his Florida Bar page...

Anyone surprised? Four years after his arrest, four years after a plea and the subsequent sealing of his criminal record, not a single action from the bar.

Once again, what's the big deal about any of this? No big deal I guess unless you've picked up on the fact that whether it's the Florida Bar or the state attorneys office, their choice of prosecutions seems to be highly selective. While some people are put through the ringer, others aren't even investigated. Maybe I'm nuts, but I'm of the belief that if an attorney pleads out to a crime, they should receive some sort of discipline from the appropriate professional governing bodies. Let's see if they still sit back and do nothing after we get done filing our complaints.

Thank You.

2011-11-11T07:44:00.000-05:00

To all the men and women of our armed forces who put their lives on the line and fight for the freedoms that so many of us take for granted. Thank You.

Prosecutor won't admit the screwed up in front of the Supreme Court!

2011-11-10T08:57:00.000-05:00

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I'm out on the road today gathering some docs for a future post, for now take a look at this fantastic exchange from the SCOTUSBlog between New Orleans prosecutor Donna R. Andrieu and our nations Supreme Court regarding turning over Brady material...

There may be many ways for a lawyer to realize that an argument before the Supreme Court is falling flat, but none can top this: a Justice asking if the counsel had ever considered simply forfeiting the case. That is what happened on Tuesday to Donna R. Andrieu, an assistant district attorney in New Orleans, as her argument lay all about her, in shambles. It is a heavy burden for a lawyer from that oft-criticized office to mount any defense of its prosecutions, but Andrieu repeatedly found ways to botch virtually every point as she argued Smith v. Cain (docket 10-8145).

The case is the second before the Court in the past year to raise deep questions about the way the Orleans Parish office has prosecuted criminal cases, over a good many years.. And, near the end of Andrieu’s troubled argument, she was reminded of that history by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who seemed to be wondering whether the D.A.’s staff there would ever learn. In both this Term’s case and last, the issue was whether the prosecutors had failed in their constitutional duty, under Brady v. Maryland (1963), to turn over evidence that could help lawyers defend their clients.

The aggressive exchanges were getting to Andrieu, and the phrase “I’m sorry” began appearing regularly in her answers, as she suggested, now and then, that she had misunderstood the questions. As her argument was winding down, Justice Elena Kagan leaned forward and asked: “Ms. Andrieu, did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case?” Stunned, the prosecutor said: “I’m sorry?”

Imagine that? A prosecutor admitting to making a mistake??

Kagan repeated: “Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case? You’ve had a bunch of time to think about it. Do you know? We took cert a while ago. I’m just wondering whether you’ve ever considered confessing error.” The prosecutor answered: “Your Honor, we believe that we have an argument that these statements of Larry Boatner are not material.”

DUH!

It only got worse for Andrieu. Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that the prosecutor “stop fighting as to whether it should be turned over. Of course it should have been turned over…Why don’t you give that up?” The prosecutor again tried, astonishingly, to make one more effort to rehabilitate witness Boatner’s credibility.

At that point, it seemed that nothing more could embarrass the New Orleans prosecutor. But Justice Sotomayor then brought up the “serious accusations against the practices of your office, not yours in particular but prior ones. It is disconcerting to me that when I asked you the question directly should this material have been turned over, you gave an absolute no.” Andrieu weakly suggested that she had misunderstood the question.

LOL!

But Sotomayor pressed on: “It is somewhat disconcerting that your office is still answering equivocally on a basic obligation as one that requires you to have turned these materials over, whether it caused harm or not.” Andrieu still did not seem to understand. She said that “today we turn all of this over….It should have been turned over. I guess what I was addressing or attempting to address was the materiality prong of Brady.”

Unreal. Why is this concept of turning over exculpatory materials to the defense so hard for prosecutors to understand? They hold all the cards any way, why can't they simply abide by this simple requirement?

The details behind the Guaracino plea change...

2011-11-09T09:22:00.000-05:00

So what happened? What exactly caused former Plantation cop Joe Guaracino, the man the government alleges was the mastermind of a sixteen million dollar mortgage fraud scheme to suddenly change his plea after a long arduous legal battle that he was winning up till now? As we discussed on Monday, the prosecutors managed to convince the court to not only discontinue picking up Joe's legal bills but to also make him responsible for all the money the government had shelled out for his defense since he declared that he could no longer afford to pay his own way earlier this year. The prosecutors did such an effective job of convincing the court that Guaracino had duped the court into paying his legal bills that the judge even went so far as to say that the...

“...defendant mocked this Court and offended the benevolent purposes of the Criminal Justice Act"

Fine, I wasn't there and can't comment accurately on what the defendant did or didn't do to the court.

So now Guaracino has this first hurdle to overcome, how can he proceed to the second trial when he's got no money to pay his attorney or the other costs associated with going to trial, expert witnesses, exhibits, etc. Big problem. Now, let's move on to the second hurdle he's got to overcome. As if losing his ability to defend himself wasn't a big enough problem, now comes the AUSA with this...

Joe Guaracino Superseding Information

That's right, MORE CHARGES! If my information is correct, the prosecutors were ready to file even more charges if Guaracino didn't plead out! That brings us to the change and plea which ultimately ended up with this factual proffer which some of our readers claim is Mr. Guaracino coming clean and admitting to what the government alleges he had done...

Joe Guaracino Factual Proffer

So there you have it. Does any of this seem fair to you? I'm no attorney but somehow the way this went down doesn't seem exactly fair. Perhaps Mr. Guaracino really did everything the government said he did, maybe he really was the mastermind of this massive fraud scheme, if that is the case, why not prove it in court rather than go about it the way they did? On another note, consider how much money was spent in order to bring about the convictions of three out of the ten people that were originally charged in this case (as well as those who cut deals and cooperated before the trial), add to that the millions of dollars that must have been spent during the investigation that lasted nearly five years to build this case. Does that seem like the best use of the taxpayers money? A few years ago we put together a list of random frauds that we found while driving around Coconut Grove, we wrote about them in detail and retrieved all the documents to prove what had gone on ( you can find those stories here, here and here). These weren't convoluted tales of homes being purchased, renovated then rented or resold, these were cases where homes were purchased from elderly people and resold the same day using bogus appraisals and crooked title companies for two, three or even four times what they had originally been purchased for, all in the same day without the bad guys ever laying out a penny. Even better, no one ever made a single payment on these homes yet here we are nearly three years later, three years after I had originally written about the homes, three years after I had forwarded the cases to law enforcement and even taken the cases and handed them to a member of the Miami Dade County mortgage fraud task force personally. The result? Zip, NADA, NOTHING. All I ever heard was that there was no time or resources to look into these cases even though I had literally done everything for them.

I have to wonder, what would have happened if a fraction of the time and money spent on the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case could have been allocated to investigating what I wrote about? I guarantee you that these homes were just the tip of the iceberg, I have information that suggests the people that were behind those frauds were part of a much larger group that made the Plantation cops case look like chump change, but again, no money and no resources to adequately investigate. Or maybe no interest because there were no cops involved in the frauds?

Major breaking news on the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial.

2011-11-08T08:02:00.000-05:00

It looks like the mess that we've come to know as the Plantation Mortgage fraud case aka "Operation Copout" has come to an end. I'm told by a reliable source that this morning at 8:30 am the lone remaining defendant, Joseph Guaracino, is going to change his plea and agree to a 43 month sentence. Considering that the government took away any hope he had of paying for his defense for the retrial and the rumor of new charges being levied against him, cutting a deal seems like the most likely outcome. I'll update as soon as I get confirmation.

Another bizarre twist in the Plantation cops mortgage fraud saga...

2011-11-07T09:09:00.000-05:00

Just when you think things have quieted down after the second Plantation cops trial ended with a mistrial, we get another bizarre twist in the story. One can only imagine how much money the defendants must have spent throughout the course of the investigation and subsequent trials that resulted from the nearly five year long "Operation Copout" investigation that ended with the two trials that took up the better part of this past year. As we all know, the first trial ended with four out of the six defendants getting acquitted and the second trial ended with a mistrial. Midway through the second trial, defendant Joe Guaracino, the man that the government alleges was the mastermind behind the $16 million dollars or so worth of real estate transactions that are the subject of the governments case told the court that he had run out of money and could no longer afford to pay his legal expenses. That seems reasonable enough, after all, Mr. Guaracino was heavily invested in the real estate market that has since turned sour, by his own admission, everything he owns is "underwater" plus how could one be expected to earn a reasonable living let alone pay a fortune in legal bills while under indictment and out on bail?

No worries, according to our nation's Criminal Justice Act (18 U.S.C. § 3006) the government has people charged with a crime who can't afford adequate legal representation covered...

Each United States district court, with the approval of the judicial council of the circuit, shall place in operation throughout the district a plan for furnishing representation for any person financially unable to obtain adequate representation in accordance with this section. Representation under each plan shall include counsel and investigative, expert, and other services necessary for adequate representation.

Cool. Midway through the second trial the court concluded through a special hearing that Mr. Guaracino no longer had the funds to pay for his legal bills and entered an order allowing the government to pay his lawyers, expert witnesses, etc. No worries. That was all about to change after the second case ended in a mistrial. I got the feeling that after the government announced that it wasn't going to retry the other two remaining defendants from the second trial, attorney Steven Stoll and Joe's brother Dennis Guaracino, that the prosecutors were going to do just about anything they could to nail Joe Guaracino.

With that in mind, the prosecutors filed a motion to get the government to stop funding Joe's defense...

Joe Guaracino government Memorandum on Eligibility of CJA Counsel

Interesting to say the least, the government alleges that Mr. Guaracino was somewhat less than honest about how much money he had on hand and how much he was actually making when he claimed that he could not afford to cover his legal expenses. I can't say that I was surprised considering everything else that's gone on in this case when the Judge ruled in the governments favor...

Reconsideration of joe Guaracino Eligibility for Cja Counsel

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, take a look at this bit...

Not only is the judge not going to let the government pay for Mr. Guaracino's legal bills but he's making Guaracino repay all the money the government has paid on his behalf to date!

That's unreal. Am I the only one getting the feeling that the government is going to do anything and everything they can to make sure they nail Guaracino? Forget about questionable rulings like we've seen in the past, now that the guy can't pay for his own defense and the government won't foot the bill, how is he supposed to defend himself?

Uh, your honor...

2011-11-03T09:01:00.002-04:00

Ever wonder about the judges who sit high atop the bench and look down their noses as they judge average citizens like you and me? Somehow because they've either been elected or appointed to their positions, they seem to believe that by donning those robes they've absolved themselves of any wrong and somehow ascend to a god like position, at least in their minds, yet they forget that they're no different than anyone else. That brings us to the Honorable Judge William Adams of Aransas County Texas, take a look at how the good judge handles himself while off the bench in this nifty video his daughter captured through a hidden camera in her bedroom...

From the video description written by his daughter, Hillary Adams...

Aransas County Court-At-Law Judge William Adams took a belt to his own teenage daughter as punishment for using the internet to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time. She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views. The judge's wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video. The judge's wife has since left the marriage due to the abuse, which continues to this day, and has sincerely apologized and repented for her part and for allowing such a thing, long before this video was even revealed to exist. Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can't even exercise fit judgement as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His "judgement" is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter.

It's worth noting that Judge Adams has handled at least 350 family law cases this past year alone with "nearly 50 of which involved state caseworkers seeking to determine whether parents were fit to raise their children"! According to Judge Adams, he's done nothing wrong. That's strange though, it seems to me that the video in question shows a brutal assault on a 16 year old girl whose alleged misdeed was "illegally" downloading music and games on her computer.

Think about this judge's behavior next time you hear "all arise" or the next time a judge makes a ruling that makes no damn sense to you!

Convicted former City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur gets a new lawyer...

2011-11-02T09:07:00.001-04:00

Veldora Arthur the former City of Miami assistant fire chief that was federally convicted of several counts of mail and wire fraud resulting from a massive mortgage fraud scheme has replaced the attorney who represented her during trial, Larry Handfield, with a new attorney for the sentencing phase of her case. Her new attorney, Bruce Lehr, is a heavyweight in the criminal defense world down here in South Florida, here's the motion for substitution of counsel...

Substitution of Counsel for Sentencing Veldora Arthur

And her former attorneys subsequent withdrawal from the case...

Larry Handfield Motion to Withdraw Veldora Arthur

I have to wonder what caused Veldora to make this move, doesn't it seem like too little too late? Considering what was at stake, why didn't she hire a criminal defense powerhouse like Lehr before the trial? After all Mr. Lehr most recently represented attorney Stuart Rosenfeldt who was a named partner in convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein's former law firm, Rothstein, Rosenfeldt and Adler, and managed to keep him out of jail for the last couple of years, in fact the feds haven't even charged him yet and he's managed to keep his law license! Isn't this the guy you'd want on your side from the get go?

Another thing to consider is the enormous amount of money that Veldora has spent to date defending herself, her former attorney, Larry Handfield, told several of my friends that he'd collected a $150,000 flat fee from Veldora for his representation and remember, that's in addition to what she spent with the other attorney that represented her, Herbert Walker. The question that begs to be asked is where does a City of Miami firefighter come up with what seems to be easily in excess of $200k in attorneys fees? What makes this even worse is that despite spending a small fortune the cornerstone of the defense teams strategy according to the government was...

Essentially, defense counsel will use the expert to attempt to have the jury impute, infer or assume that Arthur herself is one of these people with a mortgage-broker license who allegedly does not know very much about anything pertaining to mortgages, loan applications, and closing-related documents.

Is this the best her defense "dream team" could come up with? She didn't know about anything that was going on despite the fact that she was a licensed mortgage broker herself? Isn't this defense just another permutation of the "dog ate my homework" excuse? Is that the best $200k can buy you these days? If that's the case, I'd save my money and defend myself, thank you very much!

If you're gonna vote today...

2011-11-01T09:34:00.000-04:00

If you're in the City of Miami and you're going to vote, take a moment and remember the commissioners that are responsible for bringing our fair City the visual pollution that seems to be popping up on every street corner...

LED billboards are popping up all over the City of Miami, not just the ones along the major highways but now were seeing them on busy street corners in some instances no more than two stories high putting them practically in your face. Think of how much money the billboard industry has flooded into the campaign coffers of those running for reelection today and you might get a better understanding of who really runs our government.

Here we go again with that attorney client privilege shit again!

2011-10-27T09:15:00.000-04:00

We've discussed this concept ad nauseum since the inception of our blog. It's a pretty simple concept, from Wikipedia...

...a legal concept that protects certain communications between a client and his or her attorney and keeps those communications confidential. The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest recognized privileges for confidential communications.^[1] The United States Supreme Court has stated that by assuring confidentiality the privilege encourages clients to make “full and frank” disclosures to their attorneys, who are then better able to provide candid advice and effective representation.

Simple enough right? Go into your attorney's, bare your soul and tell your attorney the truth about whatever you're involved in so that that can effectively represent you and possibly get you out of the pickle you've found yourself in. When you run afoul of the law, you'll tell your attorney things that you wouldn't want the cops or the prosecutors to know about, if you're smart, you'll tell your attorney the truth about what's gone on and hope that they can figure out a proper defense to make sure you stay out of trouble.

Several months ago we played you a tape of Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein trying to reach out to his client, former Plantation cop Joe Guaracino who was under federal investigation for mortgage fraud at the behest of the feds who were trying to get Guaracino to talk to Rothstein about his pending legal troubles while the feds listened in.

We outlined a "hypothetical" scenario a little over a year ago, take the time and read over that post again. Problem with that "hypothetical" scenario is that it wasn't hypothetical, it actually happened. The prosecutor that was running the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case, the first case we discussed on our blog, actually forced one of the targets of his investigation to wear a "body wire" while they were at their attorneys office with other targets in the case discussing the case with their attorney! From what we had heard at the time, assistant state attorney Bill Kostrzewski had threatened to arrest the individual unless they wore the wire and worse, both Kostrzewski and that assclown mortgage fraud detective Jorge Baluja both threatened this person with arrest if they ever told anyone about wearing the wire! NICE! Of course they wouldn't want anyone to know that they were able to listen in on privileged attorney client conversations, the cop could always say that he did it at the direction of the prosecutor, but what excuse would the prosecutor have?

At first I really had no proof other than a rumor I heard that started with a distant relative of the person wearing the wire. Regardless, for the last three years I kept at it until I finally managed to meet the person who wore the wire who then confirmed the whole story and also confirmed that the wire at the attorneys office was approved by non other than assistant state attorney Bill Kostrzewski himself.

For those of you who don't understand the magnitude of the state listening in on privileged attorney/client conversations regarding a pending criminal matter, talk to an attorney and see what they tell you. As for our friend Mr. Kostrzewski, get ready, the ride ahead is going to get a bit bumpy, I suspect you'll be hearing from the Florida Bar pretty soon...

Lender negligence, admissible or not?

2011-10-25T10:10:00.000-04:00

We've stated time and time again that the banks that lent the money throughout the real estate boom of the last decade were just as responsible for the real estate and subsequent economic meltdown as were the people they lent the money to, we've even gone so far as to label them the "unindicted co-conspirators" in many of the criminal mortgage fraud cases that we've discussed.

Some of you may remember the prosecution in the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case fighting tooth and nail to stop the defense attorneys from using the theory of "lender negligence" as part of their defense. From one of the prosecutions motions...

...precluding the defendants from presenting evidence of, or argument referring to,
any lack of actual reliance by the victim mortgage lenders on the defendants’ misrepresentations
any purported or actual negligence by victim mortgage lenders; or
the present foreclosure crisis and the Government’s action in seeking to resolve the foreclosure crisis, whether in opening statement, direct or cross-examination, closing argument or otherwise.

I'm not sure what the f-ing big deal was about keeping the theory of "lender negligence" from the jury, what ever the case may be, the judge agreed with the prosecution and for reasons unbeknownst to me, the jury never heard a peep about lender negligence. I had my theories about what went on and even went so far as to suggest that the judge may have been biased towards the prosecution. Who knows what really went on here, what you would expect though is if that one federal judge rules a certain way regarding using the theory of lender negligence as a defense, wouldn't you think another federal judge would rule the same way in a similar trial? I was researching the Ivanhoe Semester mortgage fraud case the other day and I came across another motion by the government to exclude lender negligence as a defense, here it is...

Motion in Limine to Exclude Lender Negligence Ivanhoe Smester

As the title of the motion says...

UNITED STATES' MOTION IN LIMINE REGARDING REFERENCES TO MORTGAGE LENDERS, FORECLOSURE CRISIS AND ANY GOVERNMENT ACTION DURING FORECLOSURE CRISIS

That's funny as shit, not only does the prosecution not want the jury to know about any lender negligence during the real estate meltdown, but they don't want to have the jury hear about anything the government might have done to help blow up the bubble either! SWEET! It's almost like they're asking the jury to ignore that closeted gay cross dressing family member during holiday gatherings, we all know that he/she is there but god forbid anyone mentions anything!

So what's the big deal here? While Judge Cohn from the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case granted the governments motions and didn't allow the jury to hear anything about lender negligence and the role the banks played in the real estate and economic meltdown, the judge in the Ivanhoe Semester case, Judge Cecilia Alatonga, wasn't having any part of that bullshit, several months before the Plantation cops case went to trial, Judge Alatonga denied the government's motions and allowed the defense to use the theory of lender negligence as part of their defense. At least in my opinion, that was the right thing to do, now, can someone explain why Judge Cohn didn't rule the same way?

The Ivanhoe Smester mortgage fraud case, just a little more complicated than the New Times thought And finally, someone files a complaint against City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff!

2011-10-21T09:28:00.001-04:00

Earlier this week we discussed the New Times article on the Ivanhoe Smester mortgage fraud case, the article alleged that Mr. Smester was wrongfully imprisoned for some frauds that his childhood friend committed, the article then goes on to say...

Finally, three days before Valentine's Day 2011, a judge dismissed the counts against Smester.

Some how the article left out the fact that Mr. Smester went to court on these charges and after a short trial was found guilty! Check out the indictments...

Indictment Ivanhoe Smester

Superseding Indictment Ivanhoe Smester

And the subsequent verdict...

Jury Verdict Ivanhoe Smester

So things are a little more complicated that they appear in the New Times article, we'll get together what we can of the case file today and discuss on Monday.

Our friends over at the Crespo Gram report and Investigation Miami have done a great job covering the how Commissioner Marc Sarnoff allegedly used the taxpayer funded Downtown Development Authority to help him win his bid for reelection, now it looks like one of the candidates running against him, Michelle Niemeyer has followed their lead and filed a complaint against him with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics & Public Trust and notifed the State Attorneys office of the situation. From the Daily Business Review article...

A candidate seeking to oust Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff claims he used his position with the Downtown Development Authority to benefit his political campaign.
Michelle Niemeyer, an attorney and chair of the Coconut Grove Village Council, filed a complaint Thursday with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics & Public Trust.
She alleges Sarnoff misused public resources, including DDA employees, when he allowed the authority to mail postage-paid postcards to downtown residents and likely voters.
According to the complaint, Sarnoff didn't object to the DDA board's decision to pay for the cards that asked for contact information in case residents wanted absentee ballots or wanted to make address changes.
The postcards were pre-addressed to the DDA office, not the Miami-Dade Elections Department. Niemeyer said Sarnoff would have useful voter information at his disposal when the DDA collects the postcards.
"DDA funds and DDA employees' time and resources had to have been used in creating the materials and dealing with the responses," Niemeyer claimed.
Sarnoff said the complaint is baseless. He said the DDA has neither shared the voters' information with him nor has he asked for it.
Sarnoff said the DDA had a similar mailing campaign during the recent county mayoral elections.
The DDA is funded through property taxes levied on businesses and condo owners in the downtown and Brickell areas.
Niemeyer sent a copy of the complaint to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

A great step in the right direction, I doubt the complaint is going to get anywhere but at least it will bring to light the kind of shenanigans going on behind the scenes during this campaign.

Sentencing for two guys who admitted to a decade worth of fraudulent mortgages...

2011-10-19T09:05:00.001-04:00

So what do you get when you've admitted to committing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars worth of mortgage fraud over the span of a decade? The two mortgage brokers at the epicenter of the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud trial, Matt Gulla and Rene Rodriguez Jr, have finally received their sentences, remember, they both admitted to among other things, destroying evidence, committing thousands of other frauds, not to mention that they literally imploded in court while testifying against the men on trial possibly causing the prosecution their case.

So what would these guys get considering the only two guys convicted in this entire case John Velez and Joseph Derosa received 42 months and 37 months respectively in federal prison for committing a fraction of the crimes that Gulla and Rodriguez committed. Take a look for yourselves...

Matt Gulla Sentence

Rene Rodriguez Jr. Sentence

Interesting huh? Matt Gulla gets 34 months and Rene Rodriguez gets 43 months in federal prison. Remember even after these guys both became cooperating government witnesses they were proven in court to lie about the extent of the other frauds they were involved in, were exposed to be liars while on the stand severely damaging the prosecution who they were supposed to be helping and then admitted to committing fraud in every single loan they processed over the last decade, by their own admission, fraud in over a billion dollars worth of mortgages. With all that in mind does it seem fair that they literally only get a slap on the wrist for their crimes?

Let's not forget that in addition to everything else that they did, after cooperating with the government and allegedly turning over all the evidence that they had in their possession pertaining to the case at hand almost two years after they had cut their respective deals and cooperated with the government, on the eve of the first trial they admitted to shredding documents and destroying their office servers which could have held tons of documents that would have been favorable to the defense. Even after making that kind of admission, at the end of the second trial the government even made a motion to the court asking that their sentences be reduced because of their "substantial assistance" to the prosecution. WTF?!

Remember, before there were any indictments, before there was even a hint of anyone getting arrested in the Plantation Cops mess, both Gulla and Rodriguez had retained top flight defense attorneys and had hammered out deals with the government in exchange for selling out the rest of the guys charged. Considering how light their sentences are and the fact that they won't pay any restitution despite admitting to over a billion dollars worth of fraud, this just goes to show that when you think the shit is going to hit the fan, make sure you win the race to the prosecutors office, whoever gets there first, will get the best deal as evidenced by Gulla and Rodriguez's sentences. That's all well and good if you can live with yourself and don't mind looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life...

In a hurry but in the mean time, check out this horrific botched mortgage fraud case...

2011-10-18T09:13:00.000-04:00

Sorry folks, too much going on to dedicate the time needed for a proper post, in the mean time check out this horrific botched mortgage fraud case from yesterdays Miami New Times...

"Where is Julio Llanessa!" screamed the lawman's voice on the phone. Ivanhoe Smester was baffled. The Dominican immigrant hadn't spoken to his childhood friend in more than a year, even when Llanessa was arrested for mortgage fraud. So why were U.S. Marshals calling him now?

Unbeknownst to Smester, Llanessa and girlfriend Laura Fernandez had jumped a half-million dollars in bond, jetting out of the country on a private plane. It was March 2010. Prosecutors were furious. They were also convinced Smester knew where his buddy from Santo Domingo was hiding.

In a matter of days, Smester's life was turned upside down. Feds showed up at his mother-in-law's house looking for him. They called his father in the Dominican Republic. On April 26, Smester turned himself in. Prosecutors charged him with bank and wire fraud involving a dozen properties in South Florida. "I was shocked," Smester says. "I've never been involved in the mortgage business. I've never even bought a house here in the U.S."

At the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami, prosecutors again leaned on Smester for his friends' whereabouts. They told him he was facing 30 years if he didn't cooperate. Even worse, because Smester hadn't yet become a citizen after marrying his American wife, prosecutors threatened to deport him. He might never again see his 1-year-old son. All because his name appeared -- misspelled Semester -- on a check supposedly cashed by Fernandez.

"The reason why Ivanhoe was indicted on such thin evidence was that they truly believed that he knew where Julio and Laura were," says Smester's lawyer, Silvia Piñera-Vasquez. "They were fishing. The government just threw out a net and caught him, but he didn't have anything to do with it."

Jail was a living hell. The government even secretly recorded visits from his wife. Even she was losing faith. Their marriage was falling apart.

"I spent those ten months in jail wondering one thing," Smester says. "Why did they use my name? Why involve me in the fraud they were committing?" He replayed in his mind the last time he had seen Llanessa, when the property flipper's $700,000 Lamborghini was repossessed in Brickell.

Finally, three days before Valentine's Day 2011, a judge dismissed the counts against Smester. He lost nearly a year of his life because of a bogus check. He holds out hope that his childhood friend will pay for setting him up. "I think they'll catch him," Smester says. "Julio has hurt a lot of people."

Horrific to say the least, poor guy sits in jail for ten months because the government thinks he knows where his alleged accomplice is and he wouldn't give him up. Does this sound rational to you guys or does this sound like something befitting Hitler's gestapo?

Meanwhile in Miami...

2011-10-15T18:37:00.000-04:00

Photos from the Occupy Miami protest courtesy of our friends over at Nikon Miami...

The nightmare is over for Steven Stoll and Dennis Guaracino...

2011-10-13T15:11:00.006-04:00

Another twist in the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case, just like that it's over for two of the remaining three defendants...

Government Dismisses Federal Mortgage Fraud Case Against Steven Stoll and Dennis Guaracino

From the Sun Sentinel...

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday they are dropping all criminal charges against a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and a former police officer arrested last year in a mortgage fraud investigation.

The decision to dismiss the cases against attorney Steven Stoll and former Plantation Police Officer Dennis Guaracino comes a month after a Fort Lauderdale federal jury deadlocked on the charges against them.

The two men and Joseph Guaracino, who is Dennise Guaracino's brother, spent more than five months on trial defending themselves against allegations resulting from "Operation Copout" — an inquiry into a group of police officers involved in suspicious real estate transactions.

The U.S. Attorney's Office will continue pursuing its case against Joseph Guaracino, whose first trial also ended in a hung jury, federal prosecutors told U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn.

That's great news for attorney Steven Stoll and Dennis Guaracino but not so great news for his brother Joe who looks like he's going back to court to face a second trial which is set to start on December 5, 2011.

More on former City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur's lawsuit against J.P. Morgan Chase for fraud!

2011-10-11T09:13:00.001-04:00

As we mentioned last week, just days after City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur was convicted for various types of fraud in federal court, lawyers on her behalf (as well as several others) filed suit against J.P. Morgan Chase for of all things, FRAUD! From the Daily Business Review article...

Boca lawyer goes on offensive against Chase
Adolfo Pesquera

Most lawyers who represent homeowners in foreclosures use defensive strategies in their efforts to hold off the lender, but not W. Jeffrey Barnes.

The Boca Raton lawyer has launched an offensive against JPMorgan Chase using state racketeering law.

Barnes filed a state civil RICO action in Palm Beach Circuit Court against Chase claiming the lender engaged in a national pattern of "fraudulent foreclosure proceedings based on false and fraudulent misrepresentations."

It may not be the preferred legal strategy in challenging Florida foreclosures, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea, prominent foreclosure defense attorney Thomas Ice said.

"We've looked at all sorts of plaintiff-side actions, particularly the class-action type lawsuit," said Ice, managing partner of Ice Legal in Palm Beach Gardens. But ultimately we decided they aren't suited for our client base. We'll continue to use defensive strategies rather than offensive strategies."

Going down the beaten path has not been Barnes' method. The founder of the Newport Beach, California-based Foreclosure Defense Nationwide website and blog has built a national network of 39 law firms, allowing him to defend against foreclosures in 26 states. The latest lawsuit, Linda Zimmerman et al v. J.P. Morgan Chase and Chase Home Finance, represents his alliance with the Washington Mutual Homeowners Support Group, a grassroots organization of former WaMu mortgage customers.

The lawsuit is not intended to save anyone's home, Barnes explained. It is a counter-punch intended to hurt the bank by exposing its alleged fraud.

"This was never intended to be arm-twisting to get the bank to do loan modifications," he said. "These are damages claims."

Foreclosure Rights
The alliance had its genesis in how Chase claimed the right to foreclose on the defunct WaMu's home loans.

When WaMu failed in 2008, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sold certain assets to Chase. But in filings submitted in Deutsche Bank v. FDIC and Chase, Chase said it "did not become WaMu's successor in interest," Barnes cited in the lawsuit.

Despite that admission, Barnes said Chase — through its servicer Chase Home Finance — instituted foreclosure proceedings nationally on WaMu mortgages, listing itself as successor in interest to carry forward WaMu's ownership interests.

The lawsuit claims Chase and Chase Home used the electronic clearinghouse Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems and bogus assignments to improperly pursue foreclosures. The bank also allegedly ignored state laws, such as required certifications in New Jersey and mandatory good faith pre-foreclosure resolution efforts in California.

"This pattern of filing false declarations ... and failure to provide proof of legal ownership in Florida and other jurisdictions is consistent with Chase's pattern of falsely misrepresenting the legal scope of the FDIC affidavit," Barnes said.

Chase has received a 30-day filing extension, delaying its answer to the Palm Beach Circuit lawsuit, Barnes said.
Chase representatives did not respond to calls for comment by deadline.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop to all Chase foreclosure activity in eight states: California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. They are home to the 32 homeowners suing Chase individually, not as a class.

"We expect that there are going to be more," Barnes said.
One of the reasons the suit was filed in Florida is the operations of the servicer, Chase Home Finance, he said.
"I termed it nationalized mail fraud in the lawsuit because of the generation of documents out of (Chase Home's) nerve center in Jacksonville," he said.

Legal Options
Zimmerman, a Boca Raton legal researcher, claims she was suckered into a negatively amortized loan, something she didn't realize until after the closing in 2008. Her $1,800-a-month mortgage quickly turned into a $3,425-a-month payment, and she fell into default in February 2009. Her house today is worth a third of its original value.

Relying on her professional training, Zimmerman became a resource for the WaMu Support Group. She said the assignment document used against her listed a receptionist as a bank vice president.

"It's a person who was not an official of the bank," Zimmerman said. "Their fraud became very evident."

She and the Support Group approached Barnes about using the Florida Civil Remedies for Criminal Practices Act, the state RICO law, against Chase.

"I had considered different options, class action lawsuits," Zimmerman said. "The only ones that seemed to benefit from class actions were the lawyers."

She noted the example of an acquaintance in California who was in a class action against Bank of America. His portion of the settlement came to $3,009. She did not think that was a solution.

Document Fight
Lenders and servicers have been successful in avoiding having questionable documents used against them in Florida courts by dismissing foreclosure actions when homeowners allege fraud, Barnes said.

"In other Chase litigation, I have to fight to get documents. Routinely, they object to almost everything. They fight you on the discovery. That's probably why we've had so many cases dismissed for discovery violations. Once there's an order compelling discovery, the banks just don't respond or they ask for open-ended extensions or they file incomplete responses. The judge files a dismissal without prejudice with the refiling conditioned on providing discovery, and they just don't do it," he said.
A nationwide RICO action broadens the possibilities for discovery. Barnes pointed to a case in Las Vegas.

Troy Fox, an associate at Crosby & Associates in Las Vegas, handled a case accusing Wells Fargo of using a fraudulent notary stamp on a deed of trust assignment. This surfaced during the third loan modification mediation.

"They again denied the client for a modification. We asked about the stamp. They said, 'We don't think it's an issue.' We did," Fox said.

Fox is asking for an evidentiary hearing on the fraud claim and sanctions sufficient to bring the mortgage down to the current market value.

"Nevada is a nonjudicial state," Fox said. "They cannot rescind the notice of default unless we agree."

While Ice, who has been at the forefront of probes into the robo-signing scandal, has opted not to pursue RICO claims, he applauds attorneys who try different approaches. Any method that exposes more fraud can only help other attorneys, he said.

"It becomes much easier for you to get your own information because you already have a road map of where you want to go," Ice said.

While I agree that the practices engaged by the banks recently in these foreclosure proceedings are just as egregious as the frauds that the borrowers engaged in when they borrowed the money, at the end of the day what you can't get around is the fact that these people ARE NOT PAYING THEIR DAMN MORTGAGES! Regardless, why aren't these banks punished in the same manner as the people who submitted fraudulent paperwork on their loans? Why the double standard? Over the course of our blog, we've seen several instances where people where convicted and sentenced to prison for simply misstating their incomes on loan applications or by submitting some fake paperwork in order to get approved for a home mortgage, so why the double standard? Why aren't these banks held accountable just like the average citizen?

Regardless, here's the lawsuit for your reading pleasure. The first eleven pages consist of legal maneuvering by Chase's attorneys to get the case removed from circuit court and into the proper federal venue, enjoy...

Veldora Arthur Sues Chase for Fraud

A bit of advice to the attorney who filed this suit, Mr. W. Jeffrey Barnes, perhaps next time you may want to vet your clients a little better and make sure that they weren't just federally convicted for FRAUD before you file suit on their behalf!

What happened in the Veldora Arthur federal mortgage fraud case in her own words. And guess who's suing J.P. Morgan Chase for FRAUD?!

2011-10-07T09:04:00.000-04:00

We're fortunate enough to get a rare glimpse into what exactly happened in the City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur's federal mortgage fraud case, that is what happened according to Veldora herself as she explained it to the FBI. Here's a transcript of what she told the FBI and the AUSA during her interview on August 5, 2010...

FBI Interview of Veldora Arthur

We'll go through it in detail on Monday, but till then, has anyone guessed who's suing J.P. Morgan Chase for fraud? I'll give you a hint...

You got it, just days after she was thrown in Federal Prison for all sorts of fraud, lawyers on behalf of Veldora ACTUALLY SUED J.P. Morgan Chase for fraud on her behalf!

LOL! We're digging up the complaint now, we'll discuss on Monday. Have a nice weekend!

Meanwhile back at the Herald...

2011-10-05T09:24:00.000-04:00

While we were rather impressed with ourselves for being mentioned the other day in the Miami Herald regarding our coverage of the Veldora Arthur mortgage fraud trial, we actually missed the Herald's first attempt at covering the verdict last week. Take a look for yourselves at the story that was buried in the business section, as always click on the image to enlarge...

Funny how the City of Miami's Assistant Fire Chief gets convicted of several counts of mail and wire fraud yet somehow it doesn't make the headline, instead the story is led off with...

Broward man sentenced in fraud schemes.

Even worse, the Herald's staff writer Toluse Olorunnipa couldn't even figure out where Veldora worked, from the article...

...a former assistant to Miami-Dade’s fire chief was found guilty of taking part in an $11 million mortgage fraud scheme in Aventura...

Oh really?

I could have sworn Veldora was employed by the City of Miami and not Miami-Dade county!

Despite the Herald's failure to put together a proper story, their real failure was highlighted by our friends over at Random Pixels yesterday. While the Herald has been largely ignoring Veldora's story and has relegated it to the back pages of the paper, the Herald's Spanish sister publication, El Nuevo Herald, deems Veldora's mortgage fraud capers to be front page news...

From the El Nuevo Herald article (with translation thanks to Random Pixels via google translate)...

by Melissa Sanchez
El Nuevo Herald

Veldora Arthur, the Deputy Chief of the Miami Fire Department, convicted Friday of mortgage fraud, will be eligible to continue receiving almost $167,000 in annual pension while jailed.

Robert Nagle, manager of the Retirement Fund for the Fire and Police of Miami, said a lawyer for the Fund is reviewing the federal case against Arthur to determine whether the crime in her capacity as deputy chief - for example, in uniform or during hours.

"Committing a felony could cause a recipient of a pension to lose [his/her] pension, but the crime must have been connected to his position," said Nagle. "If it was something they did in their private time, then they keep their pension."

Amazing how the Herald won't cover sensitive City of Miami related matters and how us non Spanish speaking readers have to look to the Spanish version of the Herald to find out WTF is going on! Regardless, we're still looking into documents regarding Veldora's crimes in order to determine whether or not she used her official possession at the City (not the county) during the commission of the frauds she was indicted for, we'll update as soon as we find anything new.

What everyone wants to know, was Veldora Arthur committing mortgage fraud while on the job at the City of Miami Fire Department?

2011-10-04T09:15:00.000-04:00

Now that City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur has been convicted of several counts of mail and wire fraud, the question that everyone seems to be asking is whether or not she's going to keep her City of Miami FD pension. The litmus test seems to be whether or not she committed the crimes while on the job at the fire department, from our comments sections yesterday...

It's gonna have to be proven that she used her official position to commit the felony.

Understood, so how can we prove that she used her official position to commit the crimes she was indicted for? Once again from our comments section...

There was a rumor that she used her City fax or email to transmit some of the fraudulent communications. Can you look into that?

Of course we can! Without having the entire case file at my disposal, this was a bit of a challenge, that is until I found this bit of information regarding a dispute Veldora had during the purchase of another home unrelated to the indictment where her primary residence was called into question. Take a look at this excerpt...

It bears mentioning that after the purchase of Unit 3711, Loan City, the lender, conducted a review of the documents submitted in support of the loan for Unit 3711 and came to the conclusion that the defendant had misrepresented, among other things, her occupancy of the property as her primary residence. Loan City sought indemnification from WCS Lending who processed and collected the information on behalf of Loan City. In connection with that dispute, the defendant on June 27, 2006 wrote a letter that was faxed that same day from the City of Miami Fire Department wherein she stated as follows: “In regards to the statement regarding my residency, I have never stated to any official at Loan City or any other agency that I don’t reside at 3370 Hidden Bay Drive, Unit 3711. That statement is totally false as I have been residing there since I purchased the unit.”

In this instance, Veldora was purchasing a home on the west coast and inadvertently listed her primary residence as her home in Weston, when the mortgage broker who was reviewing the loan package for the home on the west coast that they had just lent her the money on, they spotted the Hidden Bay drive unit on her credit report (which was one of the homes that were part of the federal indictment) and realized that she had submitted conflicting statements about where her primary residence was. In an effort to cover her tracks, Veldora wrote a letter to the lender where she stated...

“In regards to the statement regarding my residency, I have never stated to any official at Loan City or any other agency that I don’t reside at 3370 Hidden Bay Drive, Unit 3711. That statement is totally false as I have been residing there since I purchased the unit.”

Unfortunately Veldora sent this bogus letter while on the job at the City of Miami Fire Department...

"the defendant on June 27, 2006 wrote a letter that was faxed that same day from the City of Miami Fire Department"

While this is the only evidence we've been able to find of Veldora using her position at the FD to commit the frauds she was ultimately convicted of, we're told that there were several other instances where she used her time on the job to further her criminal activities. The question that remains is whether or not this is enough to get her pension taken away from her. We'll keep looking for a definitive answer and report back.

We get a mention in the Miami Herald and celebrate an anniversary of sorts...

2011-10-03T09:17:00.000-04:00

As the title says, we've finally gotten some credit for our work in the Miami Herald story regarding convicted mortgage fraudster Veldora Arthur. Unlike the Herald's Chuck Rabin, who flagrantly ripped off our story and neglected to credit us, Herald staff writer Elinor J. Brecher did a fantastic job summing up the conclusion of the nearly two week long mortgage fraud trial.

The question that remains to be asked now that Veldora's behind bars is what's the story with her city of Miami FD pension? I'm being told by several sources that because of her conviction, her pension could be gone? I'm doing a little more digging on this matter and will update as soon as possible.

Now, on to this anniversary business, today marks the three year anniversary of the mortgage fraud case that lit the fire under my ass to start this blog, specifically the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it's a case that was hobbled together in a rush by a rookie MDPD detective, Jorge Baluja, and a washed up assistant state attorney, Bill Kostrzewski, where they took the word of a unemployed serial fraudster named Bernardo Barrera, who claimed that his identity was stolen and used in the commission of a massive mortgage fraud scheme. Unfortunately, the state put together the case without properly investigating and overlooked the fact that alleged "victim" was himself an integral part of the mortgage fraud scheme. Once we uncovered Mr. Barrera's complicity in this scheme, he quickly uprooted and hauled ass to Panama. What's troublesome though is even though we presented overwhelming evidence of Mr Barrera's complicity to the state attorneys office, to this day they refuse to go after him.

So where are the other players responsible for this mess today? Assistant state attorney Kostrzewski's been thrown off the mortgage fraud unit at the state attorneys office and Detective Baluja has been thrown down to the "Homestead exemption fraud" unit in the MDPD where he's charged with going after people who cheat on their homestead tax exemptions. So much for climbing up the ladder, right guys? Oh well!

We're awaiting the arrival of more documents on the Veldora Arthur case, tomorrow we should have a copy of Veldora's pre indictment statement to the FBI of just how things went down in her very own words.

Update on the Veldora Arthur mortgage fraud case.

2011-10-01T18:58:00.001-04:00

Looks like the United States Attorney's Office issued a press release regarding the outcome of the Veldora Arthur, Neil Fagan and Pamela Johnson mortgage fraud trial late Friday afternoon. Here it is in it's entirety...

JURY FINDS MORTGAGE FRAUD DEFENDANTS GUILTY OF ALL COUNTS IN MORTGAGE FRAUD SCHEME INVOLVING THE HIDDEN BAY CONDOMINIUM COMPLEX IN AVENTURA, FLORIDA
September 30, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and John V. Gillies, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office, announced that a federal jury found defendants Neil Fagan, Pamela Johnson, and Veldora Arthur guilty of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and all substantive mail-fraud counts set forth in the February 3, 2011 superseding indictment. The indictment included charges of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and substantive mail fraud. The conspiracy and mail fraud counts carry a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment. All defendants were remanded into the custody of the United States Bureau of Prisons following their convictions.
Fagan and Johnson were charged in Counts 1 through 5 of the indictment and were convicted on all counts. According to the evidence, Fagan recruited the straw buyers who bought the properties listed in the indictment and received approximately $1,300,000 in mortgage fraud proceeds. Johnson served as the settlement agent who handled the real estate closings and diverted fraud proceeds to herself and family members. Arthur, charged and convicted of Counts 1, 3, and 5, was an Executive Assistant to the Fire Chief in the City of Miami Fire Department who served as a straw buyer. Arthur received approximately $317,000 in fraud proceeds in less than a month.
The properties in the case were located at 3370 NE 190 Street in Aventura, Florida, which is known as the Hidden Bay Condominium Complex. During the course of the conspiracy approximately $11,000,000 in fraudulent loans were issued, resulting in a loss to lenders of approximately $7,000,000.
Sentencing for Johnson and Fagan has been scheduled for December 15, 2011at 8:30am. Sentencing for Arthur has been scheduled for December 16, 2011 at 8:30 am.
Mr. Ferrer commended the investigative efforts of the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Armando Rosquete and Sean McLaughlin.

I missed a crucial part of the press release after a quick glance, earlier today our friend Bill Cooke from Random Pixels highlighted what we missed...

All defendants were remanded into the custody of the United States Bureau of Prisons following their convictions.

HOLY SHIT! How the hell did I miss that? Veldora and company were thrown in jail right after the verdict came down? Lo and behold, Veldora and her codefendants are actually sitting in the federal detention center in downtown Miami! For the foreseeable future Ms. Arthur is going to be known as federal inmate #96343-004 and will be calling a cell much like this one in the Miami FDC home...

This really caught me off guard since most defendants that I've known of are allowed to stay out on bail while they're awaiting sentencing, I'm amazed that they took her into custody right after the verdict. Regardless of what Veldora may have done, I can't begin to imagine how hard this must be for herself and her family, first the indictment and now the incredible fall from being the City of Miami's first black female firefighter and assistant fire chief to now simply being a convicted felon sitting in jail possibly for the next twenty years.

BREAKING NEWS!!! Veldora Arthur found GUILTY!

2011-09-30T13:54:00.003-04:00

This just in, it's confirmed, city of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur and her codefendants were all FOUND GUILTY on all counts in their federal mortgage fraud trial! Here are the verdicts...

Veldora Arthur Federal Mortgage Fraud Trial Verdict

Pamela Johnson Federal Mortgage Fraud Trial Verdict

Neil Fagan Federal Mortgage Fraud Trial Verdict

To put it lightly, the defense team failed miserably. Detail coming up a little later this evening.

The cornerstone of Veldora Arthur's mortgage fraud defense...

2011-09-30T09:10:00.000-04:00

The most common defense in a mortgage fraud case lately has been "I didn't know what I was signing" or "the brokers screwed me" or my favorite, "who reads all those documents anyway"! As lame as those excuses may be, somehow they keep popping up throughout all of the mortgage fraud prosecutions that we've discussed lately. Now we can add that lame ass defense strategy to federally indicted city of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur's bag of tricks. Here's a quick summary of the expert witnesses opinions that she presented to the jury...

ARTHUR’S PROFFERED EXPERT’S OPINIONS

OPINION 1: It is not uncommon for buyers to sign closing documents without reading them.

OPINION 2: Buyers often rely on broker advice in real estate closing transactions.

OPINION 3: A buyer could be unaware of mistakes or fraud in closing documents.

OPINION 4: Some buyers complain after the fact [regarding their] knowledge of what was signed in closing documents.

OPINION 5: Brokers can and have engaged in the practice of “signing” of [sic] the buyer’s signature.

There you have it in a nutshell, the classic "I had no idea what I was doing defense". There's a small wrinkle in this instance though, come to find out that Veldora herself was a licensed mortgage broker! Considering the fact that she's a "licensed real estate professional", how far can she get with this "I had no idea what was going on" defense? In fact the government thinks that her defense attorneys are going to propose to the jury that even though she was a mortgage broker, she actually had no idea how the mortgage business worked! From one of the government's motions...

...the government anticipates that Arthur will not limit the expert’s testimony merely to the “requirements for obtaining a broker license in 2005 – 2006.” Indeed, the language in Opinion 7 regarding “and qualifications arising therefrom” suggests that Arthur will ultimately have the expert testify about her own level of knowledge/qualifications...

...the government anticipates that defense counsel will attempt to have the expert testify that individuals who obtain a mortgage-broker license are not, in fact, very knowledgeable about mortgage transactions, closings, and loan applications. From there, defense counsel might attempt to have the expert opine about Arthur’s potential level of knowledge and familiarity based on her having obtained a mortgage broker license herself. Essentially, defense counsel will use the expert to attempt to have the jury impute, infer or assume that Arthur herself is one of these people with a mortgage-broker license who allegedly does not know very much about anything pertaining to mortgages, loan applications, and closing-related documents.

Even more bizarre is that fact that even though Veldora's defense rests the blame on the mortgage brokers who allegedly "swindled" her into doing these deals, somehow her attorneys didn't cross examine them in trial. As if that wasn't bad enough...

What Arthur is attempting to posit through this alleged “opinion” is that because she was walking around in South Florida in 2005/2006 during the real estate market/climate at that time, it somehow should excuse her conduct.

LOL! So besides the fact that Veldora is the worlds dumbest mortgage broker, now we're to believe that she's involved in this multi million dollar mortgage fraud scheme simply because that was just the way the real estate market was back in 2005/06?

Good luck with that defense. The jury's still out, we'll update if there's any new developments.

The jury in the Veldora Arthur mortgage fraud case begins deliberating...

2011-09-28T21:59:00.000-04:00

As the title states, City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur's mortgage fraud case has been handed over to the jury today. We'll talk about this case and one of Veldora's defenses in a little more detail tomorrow, for now here are the jury instructions...

Jury Instructions for the Veldora Arthur Federal Mortgage Fraud Trial

Missing the target...

2011-09-27T08:47:00.000-04:00

Go back and read the comments sections of our last weeks worth of posts and you'll find long winded diatribes both for and against the defendants in the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial. Things like, Joe Guaracino is a crook, this guy drives a Corvette (the horror!), the other guy has a small penis, this one's innocent, the other guy's guilty, the jury did the right thing, the jurors are idiots, etc. So much emotion, so much anger, yet everyone seems to be missing the point.

Let's say for the sake of argument that the defendants charged in this nearly five year long investigation that's come to be known as "operation copout", were guilty. Say the government was right, they lied about their incomes, they fudged where the down payments for the homes in question came from, let's even assume there was some level of complicity from the attorneys charged as well, what's the net result? Remember, all the loans in question were paid back with the exception of a few that were under Guaracino's personal name, so in a nutshell, assume these guys were guilty of all of those things but in the end the banks all got their money back plus profits.

Now, with that assumption made, look at what was learned during trial, the mortgage brokers who made all these alleged crimes possible walked with a slap on the wrist and a $500 fine. Granted, they're going to do two or three years behind bars but anyone remember what they admitted to? Both Matt Gulla and Rene Rodriguez admitted to committing fraud on every loan they had processed over the last decade! While the government calculated the alleged Guaracino involved frauds to be somewhere in the +/- $16mm range, imagine the dollar figure for the frauds these mortgage brokers must have been involved with? It's easily in the hundreds of millions if not in the billion dollar range! We're talking a decade worth of loans, perhaps thousands of frauds. With that in mind, does the governments strategy of going after the cops really make sense? The brokers got immunity for all the other crimes they committed in exchange for their testimony against the cops that were charged as part of "operation copout", does that seem correct? At least in my opinion it doesn't. I thought that going after the mortgage brokers seemed like a more plausible scenario and therefore using the cops to testify against them, instead we got this wacky prosecution where in the end the real culprits, the real masterminds got away. Does anyone believe for a moment that Guaracino and his group of cops were the only group that the brokers worked with? Throughout the history of this case we've had plenty of people come forward and tell us that there were groups of teachers, firefighters and other cops that were all working with Gulla and Rodriguez on similar deals, why didn't anyone investigate those transactions?

The truth of the matter is that the guys who were the subject of the governments prosecution in this case were small potatoes. The "big fish", "masterminds" or "ringleaders" weren't the cops or even the lawyers that were charged, they were the mortgage brokers who in retrospect got the best deal of all considering the magnitude of their crimes. Whether the untold millions worth of fraudulent loans or destroying evidence, these guys should have gotten decades in federal prison, instead we're left with nearly 9 months of trials that seemed to never end and a two low level players whose convictions will probably be overturned on appeal. That hardly sounds like justice to me.

Speechless. Sentencing in the Plantation cops case and the government rests it's case against federally indicted city of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur...

2011-09-22T22:29:00.002-04:00

Our comments section has been abuzz over the last few days, first with the second phase of the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial ending in a hung jury and now with the sentencing of the two cops convicted in the first trial, John Velez and Joseph Derosa, being sentenced today. I was frankly very startled to learn that in light of the outcome of the second case and the fact that 4 of the six defendants from the first case were acquitted, the court seems to have thrown the book at these guys.

John Velez was sentenced today to 42 months in federal prison, Joseph Derosa received 37 months in federal prison and three years of probation. Mr. Velez was found guilty of one count of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud and one count of making false statements on a hud. Mr. Derosa was found guilty of one count of mail fraud, one count of wire fraud and one count of "making false statements within the jurisdiction of hud". Does 37 or 42 months seem commensurate with those charges? Hardly in my opinion and even worse when you take into consideration the fact that the banks that were the alleged "victims" of Mr. Velez and Mr. Derosa's scheme have done far worse than they have and to date they've gone unpunished. What makes this even more outrageous is the fact that both Velez and Derosa had no records! Let's not forget that before this mess these guys were cops!

Now, if that wasn't enough to get your blood boiling, let's take a look at what the cooperating defendants got. We'll start with the mortgage brokers, the two crooks at the center of this mess who admitted to forging hundreds if not thousands of documents, two fraudsters that admitted to committing fraud on nearly every single loan they processed over the last decade, what did the government hit these guys with? Matt Gulla got 34 months and his partner Rene Rodriguez gets 43 months with each one of them having to pay $500 in restitution each. How's that for justice?! These two characters were responsible for hundreds of millions, perhaps several billion dollars worth of fraud and they get off this lightly? Judging by the severity of the convicted cops sentences, shouldn't these two get the chair?!

So here were are after nearly five years worth of investigating, almost 8 months of trials and this is the best we can do? I'd love for someone to do a cost benefit analysis of just how much it cost to achieve the two convictions that resulted from "Operation Copout". Any wonder why our government spending is out of control?

On another note, we're being told that the government has rested its case against federally indicted City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur. This case seems to be moving at a much faster clip that the other federal mortgage fraud trials we've been watching, I suspect the trials going to be over within the next ten days. I'm also told that Veldora herself plans on testifying, that in and of itself should make for some interesting theater.

As if this week wasn't bad enough, we also had the execution of convicted murderer Troy Davis. Despite the fact that seven of the nine eyewitnesses from his trial have recanted their testimony against him, the fact that a murder weapon was never found as well as plenty of other disturbing facts that created more than enough reasonable doubt as to his guilt, the state of Georgia seemed hellbent to kill this man, they finally did yesterday. I'm not going to rehash what's already being said about this state sanctioned murder of a man who may have been innocent of the crime he was convicted of, instead I'll leave you with this letter Mr. Davis wrote just before his death...

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

Rest in peace Mr. Davis.

The conclusion of the second phase of the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial in the jury's own words...

2011-09-21T09:02:00.000-04:00

As we all know by now, the second phase of the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial ended in a mistrial with a hung jury 10-2 in favor of acquittal. The second phase of this never ending case was the governments attempt to convict alleged ringleader Joseph Guaracino, his brother Dennis and the attorney who owned the title company that the alleged fraudulent transactions went through, Steven Stoll. After nearly a week of deliberations, the jury let the judge know that they've voted several times and haven't been able to come to a unanimous decision, here's the actual note to the judge...

Presumably the jury is told to go back and deliberate some more and think the case over during the weekend after 5 full days of deliberation in an effort to come back with a unanimous decision, again they tell the judge they can't...

And finally after listing to the intricacies of mortgage and real estate transactions for nearly four months, the jury finally throws in the towel...

An with that, this ordeal came to an end, at least for now. The government has 70 days to refile the case against the three remaining defendants, you have to wonder though, will they? Think for a moment what this epic mortgage fraud prosecution has cost the government, nearly five years of investigations, possibly hundreds of interviews and countless hours of scouring over tens of thousands of documents unintelligible to all but the most experienced mortgage and real estate professionals. And how about the costs of actually trying this case and the one that preceded it? The government has been at it since the beginning of 2011, first with the first group of defendants and now the second group. After nearly nine months of slogging this mess through court, what do they have to show for it? Two convictions out of 6 defendants in the first trial and now a mistrial for the remaining 3 defendants? Can you imagine trying to justify those results in the private sector considering the millions that have been spent to achieve the two convictions? Also keep in mind that the two guys convicted were low level members of the alleged conspiracy according to the government. The government couldn't convict the alleged "big fish" or "mastermind" of this case, Joe Guaracino, let alone the attorney, Steven Stoll, that the government claimed facilitated the transactions in question. Does this make any sense to anyone?

Now, assume that the government is going to go ahead and retry this case for a moment. Remember, the prosecution fought tooth and nail to keep any evidence of "lender negligence" out of these two trials. Defendant Stoll's attorneys even filed a motion to dismiss based on the governments new lawsuits against the banks that were at the center of our nation's economic meltdown. Although the judge didn't allow the jury to hear about any evidence regarding the banks part in this mess, considering the new actions by the justice department against the lenders, do you think there's a chance in hell that they judge could keep this from the new jury if the case is retried? The whole concept of retrying a case that ended in with a hung jury seems inherently unfair to me. Isn't the mere fact that the jury ended in a 10-2 vote, meaning only two people bought the prosecutions case, enough "reasonable doubt"?

Tomorrow the two defendants that were convicted in the first trial, John Velez and Joseph Derosa, are going to be sentenced in federal court. I have a hard time understanding how they were convicted yet the other codefendants who were charged with doing the exact same thing they did were not. Regardless, in light of the outcome of the second phase of the case on Monday, we can only hope that the judge shows some level of leniency towards these guys who have had their lives and careers destroyed by this mess.

BREAKING NEWS! Second phase of the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial ends with a hung jury!

2011-09-19T16:27:00.003-04:00

As the title states, our sources tell is that after six days of deliberation the trial ends with a hung jury! From what we're told it was 10 to 2, which means 10 of the 12 jurors were going to acquit. The question now is whether or not the government is going to retry the case or just walk away...

Beyond a reasonable doubt...

2011-09-17T23:10:00.000-04:00

As we sit here after the jury in the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case has deliberated for five days without reaching a verdict, we have to consider the definition of the term "beyond a reasonable doubt". Let's look to the definition...

The standard that must be met by the prosecution's evidence in a criminal prosecution: that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts except that the defendant committed the crime, thereby overcoming the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Think about that for a moment, in order to find a defendant guilty the prosecution must provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt to establish the defendants guilt otherwise the defendant is entitled to an acquittal. How can the prosecution in this case expect the jury to find the defendants guilty in this case beyond a reasonable doubt when the governments main witnesses, the mortgage brokers Rene Rodriguez and Matt Gulla, have admitted to destroying evidence that may have been favorable to the defendants? Considering the shear volume of fraudulent mortgages Rodriguez and Gulla pulled off, by their own admission a number somewhere in the thousands, wouldn't evidence of their other frauds have been favorable to the defense theory that they were duped by the brokers and their associates as had thousands of others?

Considering the mortgage brokers destroyed evidence of these other frauds thereby making it impossible for the defendants to use the documentation involved to defend themselves, doesn't this in and of itself make it impossible for the prosecution to overcome the burden of reasonable doubt?

A picture is worth a thousand words...

2011-09-15T08:58:00.000-04:00

Another gem from the folks over at M&M liquors, even the folks in Hialeah know what time it is...

Still waiting on a verdict on the second phase of the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case, considering they're on their fourth day of deliberations, what do you guys think, good or bad?

The jury is still out on the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case and some bad news for City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur and fellow federally indicted firefighter Thomas Thelusma...

2011-09-14T09:16:00.000-04:00

As the title of the post states, the jury is still deliberating on the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case. While we're waiting for the outcome of that case, let's revisit the trial of federally indicted city of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur. As we mentioned yesterday her trial has already begun, the jury was picked yesterday and are expected to be sworn in this morning.

There is a bit of bad news for Veldora and fellow federally indicted city of Miami firefighter Thomas Thelusma, as we mentioned earlier this month, both Veldora and Thelusma share a codefendant in their respective indictments, a fellow named Patrick Brinson. Mr Brinson was indicted in both Veldora's case and Thelusma's case, I predicted that the weight of the government coming down on him on two different massive mortgage fraud indictments was going to be too much for him to bear, it looks like I was right on the money...

Factual Proffer Patrick Brinson

Essentially through his change of plea and his factual proffer, Mr. Brinson has admitted to all the facts of the federal indictment and has also agreed to cooperate fully with the prosecution against his remaining codefendants. In other words, THEY'RE FUCKED!

Regardless though, Ms Arthur has now hired a second attorney, Herbert Erving Walker, along with her original attorney Larry Handfield in order to help keep her out of federal prison. Good luck!

As the jury continues to deliberate in the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial, consider what the government doesn't want them to know about.

2011-09-12T23:12:00.002-04:00

Here we are after the first full day of jury deliberations for the second phase of the Plantation cops mortgage fraud trial, I'm beginning to get a weird feeling. See, last Friday the Sun Sentinel published a story regarding the some of the officers from the first phase of the trial, check the headline...

WTF with the timing of this story? The story is about the cops from the first part of the case, two of them were found guilty and two were acquitted, the two that got acquitted got their jobs back and the back pay and benefits they were entitled to. Really? How's this news? We covered this story almost a month ago! Why is this news now? My assumption is that this story was planted by the government over the weekend in order to in some way shape or form influence the jury that was about to render judgement against the remaining defendants. Dirty trick? No doubt as it's damn near impossible to get a juror to crawl under a rock and ignore what's in the media regarding a case their deliberating.

Assuming the intent of this story was to in some way to influence the jurors, maybe we can do a bit of the same? See the government fought tooth and nail to keep a ton of favorable information from the jurors that could have helped the defense. Let's take a quick run down of just some of the facts the jurors didn't get to hear...

Defendant Joseph Guaracino cooperated fully with the FBI and FDLE years before there was even an indictment including but not limited to handing over every single shred of documentation regarding all the properties that he ever bought and sold. Does this seem like the actions of a guilty man?

The government continually insinuated that the defendants tax returns were bogus, yet throughout the trial they were never able to prove the allegations.

The nearly four months of trial were continually peppered with allegations of inflated appraisals for the homes in question, why wasn't this ever proven in court? Why didn't a single "expert witness" come forward and prove that the appraisals were bogus?

The defendants voluntarily took polygraph tests and passed, why weren't the results allowed in for the jury to consider?

How about handwriting exemplars which proved the defendants on trial didn't forge anything but again the jury wasn't allowed to hear about it.

There were several recordings where the brokers at the center of this mess admitted to forging hundreds if not thousands of documents throughout there careers, yet again the jury wasn't allowed to hear about it.

Most importantly though, why wasn't the jury allowed to hear about the lender negligence, especially when the federal government went ahead and sued all the big lenders for their role in the real estate meltdown that subsequently brought our economy if not the worlds economy to it's knees?

I have no idea how this is going to pan out for the defendants on trial, I just can't seem to understand how the jury can render a verdict when they weren't allowed to hear evidence that in my opinion was crucial to the defense. We'll have to wait and see, we could have a verdict as early as tomorrow...

Two city of Miami Chiefs on trial today!

2011-09-12T09:30:00.000-04:00

A busy Monday morning, thePlantation cops federal mortgage fraud trial goes to the jury for deliberation, the fate of suspended City of Miami police chief Miguel Exposito is to be decided by the city of Miami commission this morning and it looks like the federal mortgage fraud trial against City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur is set to being today as well.

As we wait for the outcome of these three cases, we have to revisit the case of criminal defense attorney Alberto "Al" Milian coming to the rescue of City of Miami city manager Johnny Martinez during Fridays commission meeting. As our friend Al Crespo eloquently explained, Mr. Milian represents both the illegal gaming industry who the City of Miami police is waring with and now the City of Miami city manager. I don't know much about law, but that certainly seems like some sort of conflict to me. From Mr. Milian's statement to the commission regarding his possible conflict...

“Whether my representation of one client would be be adverse to the interests of another or vice versa, and I have taken all of the appropriate legal steps that I’m aware of to insure that I have no conflict, and I have gone beyond and sought wavier of any conflict from any client who thought that representing the manager in that capacity would represent a position adverse to their interests.”

Ok, I'm sure his clients have no problem with him representing the city manager, but the citizens of Miami should have a problem with it! Let's think this through for a moment, Mr. Milian is allegedly representing several of the alleged illegal gaming machine owners against the City of Miami Police and Chief Exposito in order to get the gaming machines back for his clients. Based on the goings on at City Hall and what we can deduce by the people surrounding embattled Mayor Tomas Regalado, the only thing between Mr. Milian's clients getting their machines back (which Al Crespo estimates to be worth over $2mm) is suspended Chief Miguel Exposito. Now we have Mr Milian interjecting himself into the quasi judicial hearings against suspended Chief Exposito on behalf of the city manager Johnny Martinez in an effort to help uphold the managers suspension and subsequent firing of the Chief. So if he's successful in helping the city manager dispose of the chief, his clients with the gaming machines win as well. Considering Mr. Milian is working against the city in one case while working with the city on the other, doesn't that create some sort of conflict? If not a legal one, certainly a moral one in my opinion. To think, all of this fuss over those god damn machines!

After all, what's all the fuss about? Anyone who's ever seen one should know that they're strictly for amusement purposes only! It says it right on the machine!

LOL! This particular guy with the yellow shirt was so amused that he spend the better part of two hours shuttling between this machine and an ATM machine draining his bank account. When he walked out of this joint penniless, he certainly didn't seem "amused"!

Meanwhile at the City of Miami commission...

2011-09-10T00:39:00.000-04:00

Here we are at 12:30 at night watching suspended City of Miami police chief Exposito's quasi judicial hearing before the City of Miami commission and we spot City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado actively participating...

After four month trial, the Plantation Cops federal mortgage fraud trial finally goes to the jury and a quick word about suspended City of Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito.

2011-09-09T09:15:00.000-04:00

After a long arduous four months, the Plantation cops federal mortgage fraud trial finally went to the jury yesterday. The jury has requested to take today and the remainder of the weekend off, so deliberations won't begin till Monday at the earliest.

Let's take a quick look at some twists and turns of the governments case against former Plantation cop Joe Guaracino and his brother Dennis. At first the government argued that the alleged mastermind of the frauds got nearly a million dollars back in total from the real estate transactions that are at the center of the federal indictment. The governments position was that that Guaracino and company scammed the closings through questionable huds and purchase contracts but during the course of the trial the defense proved that every penny that Guaracino got from these closings plus nearly a million of his own money was put back into these homes through renovations in order to make them suitable for resale at a profit. In closing, the government moves away from their original theory and instead personally attacks Guaracino for among other things being a gambler!

What the prosecution couldn't get around though was the fact that the homes in question were sold and the banks who lent the money were paid back. The governments theory was that the banks were the victims of this alleged mortgage fraud scheme, my question then is why weren't any of these alleged "victims" ever brought in to testify? There wasn't a single lender that was allegedly exploited by Guaracino and his group ever brought before the jury to testify, not a single one, no one that had anything to do with reviewing and approving these loans was ever brought before the jury. I wonder why?

So how could you put a case like this together? How could you indict a bunch of cops and two attorneys that have no previous records of misconduct with such a flimsy case? I'm going to guess there was some sort of motivation from the higher ups at the Plantation PD who had a vested interest in bringing these guys down. I'm trying to figure it out myself, I should have some better answers by Monday.

Now, on to the mess in the City of Miami and suspended police chief Miguel Exposito. Over the last couple of months all you hear about in the media and the blogosphere is how stupid the chief is, what a dimwit his second in command is, etc. Let's think about that for a second, could Chief Exposito really be an idiot? Remember, Mayor Regalado hand picked Expo to replace former city of Miami police chief John Timoney within hours of the mayor taking office. All Expo had to do from that point forward was to chill out and be the Mayors yes man and his job would be safe. Fire this guy, promote that guy, look the other way on this matter, make some files disappear on another matter etc. Follow the mayors orders and as long as the mayors got his job, so do you. Easy enough right? Instead of falling in line and being a doormat like city manager Johnny Martinez, Expo and his gang decided to take on illegal gambling in the City of Miami. Anyone who lives in Miami is intimately familiar with these illegal gambling machines aka "Makinitas", take a look at one of them in action courtesy of our friend Frank Alvarado over at the Miami New Times...

From the New Times article...

Machines like the ones German operates have been the lynchpin of Exposito's accusations against Regalado. The embattled police chief claims the mayor meddled into criminal investigations and raids involving illegal gambling at city cafeterias and bodegas. In October, Regalado championed an ordinance that would fine merchants $500 and allow them to keep the machines, instead of arrest them on state misdemeanor charges of illegal gambling.

Think about it for a moment, if the Chief was such an idiot, why would he go against his benefactor, Mayor Regalado, who's rumored to be in bed with the organizations that are behind these machines? Why would he risk a cushy six figure plus job? My opinion? Regardless of the perceived inadequacies of Expo and his crew, at the end of the day they saw theses machines and the people behind them for what they were, nothing more than an illegal racket that preyed on the poorest people of our beloved city and he decided to go after them. Does that make him an idiot or was he simply doing what any law enforcement officer was supposed to do? In my opinion, idiot or not, you can't fault the guy for doing his job.

The fight against these machines and their owners may have cost the Chief his career, but trust me, if Expo gets fired today, he's not going to go away quietly, we can expect a hefty whistle blower lawsuit from the Chief in short order, then there's the matter of all those federal criminal investigations that the Chief initiated against the Mayor and his crew, it's just a matter of time before all that ugliness comes to the surface. Let's not forget about those pesky wiretaps! How is the Mayor going to explain all that away?