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Don't get carried away, there isn't enough room on this blog to round up all the dirty attorneys out there, what we're going to do today is just summarize all the dirty attorneys that we've talked about since the inception of our blog. Here we go...
- Roger Besu- charged with stealing over two million dollars of his clients funds from his trust account.
- Sally Sawh- oddly enough she's also been charged with stealing over two million dollars of her clients funds from her trust account.
- David Rodriguez- charged several counts for setting up an illegal home purchase where the buyer was getting tens of thousands of dollars from the closing without the lenders knowledge as well as paying off the sellers mortgage weeks before the closing actually occurred according to the state. He was the attorney that put the deal together with an undercover cop acting as the sellers accountant.
- Alfredo Xiques- he's the guy who notarized forged signatures on a mortgage for his cousin allowing the cousin to make off with tens of thousands of dollars, oddly enough he was never charged.
- Scott Rothstein- the high profile attorney that ran a $1.2 billion dollar ponzi scheme through his law firm.
- Maria Teresa Lopez- where do we start? This was the suspended attorney who according to the states charging documents kept doing closings through another attorney who didn't pay off mortgages and ultimately made off with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars of lenders monies.
- Guillermo Napoleon Lopez- this would be Maria Teresa Lopez' brother who according to the state helped her launder the proceeds of the crooked mortgages. Again, oddly enough he was never charged.
- Darlene Fernandez Carus- this is the attorney that Maria Teresa Lopez used to do her fraudulent deals through, the proceeds of these closings according to the state came through this attorneys trust account and again according to the state it was this attorneys office that was responsible for paying off the mortgages on the transactions that the Lopez group profited from. Once again, despite the apparent involvement in these frauds, this attorney wasn't charged.
Last but not least, we have attorney Delaila Estefano who according the arrest affidavit prepared by Assistant State Attorney Bill Kostrzewski was charged with the following:
- Grand Theft
- Identity Theft
- Organized Scheme to Defraud
Good enough. We talked about the Grand Theft charge at length a while back and we get this gem of a quote from one of the motions filed with the court (top of page four)...
Furthermore, the State conceded that both Co-Defendant Romney and Martinez did not directly implicate Ms. Estefano has having knowledge about the underlying fraud in the case.
WTF? Nearly two years into the Bernardo Barrera Mortgage Fraud case and the codefendants haven't been able to implicate the attorney?! You have to wonder then, what did Attorney Estefano do that prompted Detective Baluja to arrest her? Let's here it in his own words...
So there you have it folks, the state alleges that not following closing instructions is what got the attorney arrested. Not stealing millions of dollars from trust accounts, not for failing to pay off peoples mortgages, not for fraudulently notarizing peoples signatures or for doing fraudulent deals with undercover cops but for allegedely failing to follow closing instructions. Brilliant Jorge.
I get it! Based on all the hits the site gets, the most popular keywords other than the people involved in this case are Ernesto Portuondo and Roger Besu. Fine, you guys want to know the story that bad?! I'll tell you the damn story. Let's start with the criminal information filed by the state against Mr. Ernesto "Ernie" Portuondo, here is count #1:
Ok, that's fairly straight forward, that speaks to the grand theft charge, now count #2:
Ok, fraudulent mortgage docs, again, fairly straightforward. Now count #3:
And the bit of the states information speaks to the forgery charge against Mr. Portuondo. So in a nutshell, what happened was Mr. Portuondo owned a property with two other people, Jose Fonseca and Carolina Fonseca, nothing wrong there. What happened though according to the information that was filed by the state of Florida was that Mr. Portuondo went on to obtain a second mortgage on said property for the amount of $120,000 without the consent of the Fonsecas, furthermore the state alleges that Ernesto Portuondo obtained this mortgage by forging the Fonsecas signature on the mortgage documents. The state then alleges that Ernesto Portuondo went on to use the proceeds of this transaction to conduct several other transactions for which he was charged with six counts of money laundering.
Lets take a look at what the Fonsecas real signatures look like from the first mortgage of the property that is at the center of this mess:
Here we can clearly see that everyone signed the first mortgage and that it was notarized by an attorney named Alfredo Xiques. Very good. Now, lets move on to the mortgage for the fraudulent second mortgage:
So here we see signatures that look very different for the Fonsecas and we notice that someone name Vivian Morejon witnessed the signatures, but who notarized all these signatures? Let's look...
ZOINKS!! it was notarized by the same guy as the real mortgage! It was notarized by Alfredo Xiques! HOLY SMOKES! But hold your horses! THE ATTORNEY DIDN'T GET CHARGED! WTF?! That's right! The attorney who notarized the fake signatures didn't get charged, the woman who witnessed the fake signature didn't get charged and the attorney that prepared the documents didn't get charged! WHAT THE FCUK?! Why didn't they get charged?! After all, this attorney knowingly notarized documents that he knew weren't signed in front of him and one could argue that it may have even been possible that he knew that the signatures were FORGERIES! Based on what we've seen the state do in the Bernardo Barrera case, shouldn't the attorney who notarized these documents been arrested?! I mean for Christ's sakes, at least with the Bernardo Barrera case the state alleges there was an impostor at the closing, in this one they didn't even produce impostors to sign the documents!
I don't get it. Is this a perfect example of selective prosecution OR WHAT?! Remember INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY! What we've reproduced above is what the state is ALLEGING Mr. Portuondo has done.
