It's time for a VACATION! Not for us, but at least it is for the judge presiding over the Plantation Cops federal mortgage fraud trial.

.

I was perplexed over the nearly three week court recess we discovered yesterday right in the middle of the ongoing Plantation cops mortgage fraud case.  How could you take three weeks off during a federal criminal trial?  I did a little digging and found that the break was due to Judge James Cohn's vacation schedule.  I'm not exactly sure how the trial got scheduled in such a way that it could have potentially conflicted with the judges vacation, regardless, I think this is a fantastic opportunity for the defendants.  Take into account that they've been going at it for over 25 days now, right in the thick of things the defense attorneys get a breather, time to reevaluate their strategies and regroup.  In my opinion, this is a huge advantage.

With that said, I'm signing off early today, in the mean time, take a look over at Investigation Miami and see how a few local bloggers are bringing down City of Miami mayor Tomas Regalado's house of cards.

It's about time. The Miami Herald finally gives credit to one of our friends and local bloggers, Al Crespo, for breaking a story.

As the title of today's post states, Chuck Rabin of the Miami Herald has finally decided to give credit to our friend and local blogger Al Crespo of the Crespo Gram report for breaking the story of former City of Miami CFO Larry Spring's illegal severance package. It's nice to finally see mainstream media like the Herald giving credit to the people who work tirelessly and for free for doing the research and breaking these kind of stories that they usually wont report on. From the Herald article...

The payout to Spring—first reported on Al Crespo’s blog, thecrespogramreportcom — has created a furor in the local blogosphere, confusion at City Hall, and anger among some city commissioners and the mayor.

So it took "furor in the local blogosphere" before the Herald finally decided to acknowledge the corruption and outright theft that's been going on in the City? After being asleep at the switch ever since Regalado was elected mayor, the Herald has finally woken up. Great.

In my opinion the Herald giving credit to Mr. Crespo for breaking the story is a milestone, Mr. Crespo says it best in the comments section of the Herald article...

To Chuck Rabin and the Miami Herald, thanks for the credit. The times are changing, and I think that you all need to not only start crediting bloggers more, but more importantly piggybacking off our of initial efforts. You can't do what we do, but we can't do what you do either.

Correct, I've always given credit to the Herald or whoever else I get a story or information from, it's about time the Herald does the same. Which leads us to Mr. Rabin's Herald article regarding City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur's federal mortgage fraud indictment story we broke a few months back. As you all remember, our blog post was published on February 21, 2011...

The very next day Mr. Rabin of the Herald writes his story about Veldora's indictment...

No big deal right? What Mr. Rabin doesn't know is that I was watching him read our blog at 9:32 in the morning on the 22nd of February hours before he wrote his story. How do I know? Take a look at our blog tracking software report for that morning (click on image to enlarge)...

Our blog analytic software tells us that the folks at the Herald were perusing through our Veldora blog post from 9:32 am through 11:37 am ripping off our story without giving us credit. No big deal Mr. Rabin, like Mr. Crespo said...

The times are changing, and I think that you all need to not only start crediting bloggers more, but more importantly piggybacking off our of initial efforts. You can't do what we do, but we can't do what you do either.

Now, let's turn to a disturbing comment we received yesterday regarding City of Miami employees Veldora Arthur and Thomas Thelusma's employment status with the City since their federal mortgage fraud indictments...

Anonymous said...

FIRE CHIEF TOOK TOM THELUSMA I.D AND BADGE AWAY BUT COCK SUCKING VELDORA ARTHUR STILL HAS HERS. VELDORA HAS NOT BE SEEN IN 2 MONTH OR LONGER. I GUESS SHE IS IN THE BAHAMAS ON TAXPAYERS PAID LEAVE ! AND YES THE BLACK THING DOES HAVE SOME MEANING , JUST GO TO THE AMINISTRATION AND SPECIALLY SUPPORT STAFF AND YOU WILL SEE HOW DARK IT IS AROUND THERE . MFD AT AN ALL TIME LOW MORALE AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE TILL THEY CLEAN HOUSE. . IF YOU THINK VELDORA IS THE ONLY ONE NOT IN THE OFFICE , JUST GO BY HQ AND PEEP IN , YOU WILL FIND NO ONE THERE PAST 1:30 PM.

June 22, 2011 10:54 AM

I wasn't sure whether or not this comment was accurate, so I reached out to one of our sources in the fire department who clarified things for us, his responses are in blue..

"FIRE CHIEF TOOK TOM THELUSMA I.D AND BADGE AWAY BUT COCK SUCKING VELDORA ARTHUR STILL HAS HERS.
I believe this was true during their respective periods of "Paid Administrative Leave" but Thelusma was only on leave for less than 2 weeks

VELDORA HAS NOT BE SEEN IN 2 MONTH OR LONGER.

True, longer

I GUESS SHE IS IN THE BAHAMAS ON TAXPAYERS PAID LEAVE !

She has in fact traveled for personal reasons during her absence but from the records i have seen; she was charged vacation time for those absences

AND YES THE BLACK THING DOES HAVE SOME MEANING , JUST GO TO THE ADMINISTRATION AND SPECIALLY SUPPORT STAFF AND YOU WILL SEE HOW DARK IT IS AROUND THERE .

Thelusma and Arthur are both black. If he means "How dark it is" = alot of blacks; there are in fact alot more blacks in the fire administrative upper ranks than there was 10 years ago, but alot of it began under the previous anglo chief not chief kemp, so Im not sure what this guys point is but its out of context.

(1)MFD AT AN ALL TIME LOW MORALE (2)AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE TILL THEY CLEAN HOUSE.
1. This is true but mostly because Fire Rescue personnel were singled out by the Mayor and received 20-30% pay cuts last year. 2-3 times as much percent as other city employees. This has nothing to do with veldora, thelusma or anything like that. 2. not true , it has nothing to do with cleaning house of veldora, thelusma or anybody else for that matter

IF YOU THINK VELDORA IS THE ONLY ONE NOT IN THE OFFICE , JUST GO BY HQ AND PEEP IN , YOU WILL FIND NO ONE THERE PAST 1:30 PM.

Very exaggerated. The real heroes in the fire rescue department are definitely the firefighter/paramedics out on the street saving lives and definitely not the 20 or so behind desks shuffling papers, but the 1:30 part is an exaggeration. Most probably work longer days that they get paid for.

I'm glad we were able to get that cleared up. As our friend says, if Ms. Arthur isn't coming to work and being charged vacation time for her absence then it's not really "paid administrative leave" like our commenters have been suggesting.

Now, regardless of how the story of the City of Miami's former CFO Larry Spring questionable and perhaps illegal severance package became public, let's see what the folks over the City are going to do about it. Once again, congrats to our friends over at the Crespo-Gram report and Investigation Miami blog for the countless hours they put in to bring these stories to light.

We're banned!

.

That's right, according to what our friend Al Crespo tells us, several local blogs as well as our humble blog has been banned from City of Miami Computers!  From what Al tells us, the following blogs have been blocked by the City of Miami IT department...

Investigation Miami

Take Back Miami

The Straw Buyer

Miami New Times

Coconut Grove Grapevine

TruthDies

Watchdog Report

Political Cortadito

It's an honor to be included in that list of blogs.  From what we're told all but a few high ranking City of Miami employees and commissioners have been blocked from viewing the blogs listed above since about two weeks ago.  As Mr. Crespo states, this really isn't going to stop city employees from reading the banned blogs since most everyone does so with a smart phone these days.  What I'm really surprised at though is the fact that only the upper echelon of city employees is able to read the banned blogs, that really gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling as our blog gets dozens of visits on a daily basis from the following IP address...

70.88.37.189

Anyone want to guess whose IP address that is?

I got a million problems but paying for gas ain't one of them!

No shit?!  With fuel prices hovering in the mid four dollar range, there isn't a single one of us that whose wallet hasn't taken a hit, that is unless you work for the City of Miami fire department.  I got stuck having to drive up to northern Broward county (ugh) last Thursday, lo and behold three quarters of the way up the county I come across one of the City of Miami's finest...

What struck me as strange was that I happened upon this City of Miami employee at 2:50 PM and like I said in northern Broward county of all places...

It's no secret that the overwhelming majority of the City of Miami fire fighters are well compensated (six figures plus) and that there's some that have take home cars.  It's also a well known fact that there are many that live outside the city.  I continued north on I-95 till I got to my exit (Hillsborough Blvd) which was the northernmost exit in Broward county, the city vehicle pictured above kept going, presumably into Palm Beach county.  

So what was this City of Miami Fire department employee doing?  On their way home perhaps?  Maybe on the way to their second job?  What really pissed me off about this incident wasn't the fact that a city employee was driving a city owned car two counties away or the fact that the city employee was two counties away during the mid afternoon, what pissed me off (especially after spending SEVENTY DOLLARS TO FILL UP MY CAR) was the fact that the city of Miami's taxpayers were paying for this guys gas!


Al Crespo, Investigation Miami and Take Back Miami have all done fantastic jobs illustrating the waste and outright graft that's occurring in the city on several other fronts.  Look at the measures the city is taking to fill it's budget gaps (ad murals on city buildings, red light cameras, etc) while they're throwing away money paying for things like take home cars and fuel for non emergency fire department employees.  

What really puts things in perspective though is the fact that the investigators that are building cases against some of the city employees with a penchant for criminal behavior make a fraction of what they do therefore giving them that extra bit of motivation when building a case.  Stay tuned, there's another indictment just around the corner...

We have readers north of the border and a public information request done right.

It looks like our public information request story from last Friday caught the attention of Bob Norman from the Broward/Palm Beach edition of the New Times, from his article yesterday...

-- Have you ever tried to get public records from your government? Florida's Sunshine Law dictates that your wonderful and dedicated public servants should be reasonable and timely in supplying you the information. But that's not the way it works. The awful and terrible School Board, for instance, almost always tries to hit the public up with several hundred dollars in costs, especially stuff that people don't want to let out. It's just another sign of arrogance. But few compare to a recent case involving a Miami blog. The Straw Buyer requested from the Miami-Dade Police Department emails between a prosecutor and a detective in a well-publicized mortgage fraud case. Simple enough, it would seem, with one sender and one recipient. I could find that information on my email account in about 12 seconds.
Well, I'm not a governmental entity. After the jump, see how much the PD said it would cost to retrieve those emails.
Answer: $484,218.46.
That's right, nearly half a million dollars to find emails between one prosecutor and one detective involving one criminal case.
So how did they break that incredible cost down?
Using who knows what algorithm, Lt. Kathi Miller of the Economic Crimes Bureau determined that it would take 194 days to find the emails. The cost per day to "retrieve mailbox data": $2,495.97.
Multiply those two numbers and it comes to $484,218.46.
See, it all makes sense after all.

Brilliant, thanks for the mention Mr. Norman.

Now, we've mentioned Al Crespo of the Crespo-Gram report before, Mr. Crespo seems to  have a much better handle of the Florida Sunshine Law and public information requests than we do.  Recently Mr. Crespo submitted a public information request for emails from City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff's personal email accounts, at first he was turned down then today we're told that he just received 8,533 emails as a result of his public information request.  

What gives?  We ask for what can't be more than a dozen or so emails and are nailed with a nearly $500,000 bill and Mr. Crespo gets 8,533 emails at no cost?  Looks like we're not done with this public information request business and we'll certainly be taking up Mr. Crespo on his his offer on how to submit them and get results.


Till Monday folks, have a great weekend...

Who the hell reads those damn mortgages!

"What I’m doing is taking away the ignorance is a defense argument.”

               

                            - Commissioner Marc Sarnoff

Really now!  But what if you did actually take the time to read your mortgage before you executed it?  Say for example, you were to take a look at the mortgage for the property located at 3000 Shipping Avenue, what exactly would you find?

Marc Sarnoff Mortgage for 3000 Shipping Avenue Home From Country Wide Home Loans

Among other things you'd find this part that says something about the home in question being your primary residence...

Now, this could present a bit of a problem if say you weren't exactly honest about which one of your homes was your primary residence.  The Investigation Miami blog shed some light on this issue last Monday, so could this mean that the mortgage is in default if the borrower has been somewhat less than honest regarding the occupancy of the property?


Moving on, here's another standard part of the mortgage document that "no one reads" that may be of concern to some...

Now that would really be a problem for the borrower if say they got one of these letters stuck on their door...

That ain't no good now, is it?  According to the Crespo-Gram Report, Mr. Commissioner Sarnoff has been running an illegal law office out of the home located at 3000 Shipping Avenue for nearly a decade.  According to the mortgage document that illegal use of the banks collateral creates an issue for the borrower now doesn't it?

Throughout the course of our blog we've seen several instances where the police and prosecutors have vigilantly gone after people who didn't abide by the fine print in their mortgages, does anyone think they'll do the same in the case of Mr. Commissioner Sarnoff?  In fact, the entire case against the attorney that was charged in the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case was based on the attorney allegedly not following the boilerplate fine print on the closing instructions!  Does anyone even believe that there is a real investigation going into the allegations of impropriety regarding Mr. Sarnoff's mortgages?  Anyone?  Good luck with that!