Patience and perseverance pays off.

It took me nearly four years but I finally was able to nail one of my targets from back when I started this blog.  For those of you who aren't familiar with my story and how we got to where we are today, I'll fill you in.  Years ago, I had no interest in blogging or literally anything related to politics or the goings on over at the state attorneys office or the local PD, that was until a con man named Alex Orriols conducted a fraudulent real estate closing through my wife's law office.  At the time no one in my wife's office had any idea that the closing was bogus, about a year later, the man that had purchased the home in question claimed that his identity was stolen and used to obtain a fraudulent mortgage to purchase the home.  With that revelation, the moron detective that was investigating the case, Jorge Baluja, and this asshat assistant state attorney, Bill Kostrzewski, bought the guys story hook, line and sinker and proceeded to arrest my wife along with the guy who sold the house in question.  I couldn't understand how they went ahead and arrested my wife at the time despite obvious evidence that the man who claimed his identity was stolen was clearly lying and was involved in the fraud.

Regardless, it took two years for my wife to get exonerated and for the state attorneys office to drop all the charges against her.  Even though she was given an apology by the state attorney, it wasn't good enough for me.  I decided that no matter what, I wasn't going to rest until I exacted my revenge on the criminals that put my family through the two years of living hell that we experienced.  After four years or so, I finally nailed the man who recruited the straw buyer that was involved in my wife's case, Alex Orriols.  I originally wrote about him here, where I outlined how he had lied to a detective from the Miami Dade Police Department about one of the straw buyer transactions that he was involved with.  Despite the fact that I basically laid out his entire fraud in that post, I couldn't get a single person from the Miami Dade PD interested in reviewing the case, instead they just let the case sit dormant without lifting a finger.  

With that said, for the last four years, I kept hounding every single law enforcement officer that I could, whether they were from ICE, FBI, the US Marshals service or whatever till I found someone that was interested in taking the case.  Thanks to the hard work of the folks over at Homeland Security and a little help from a friend in the U.S. Marshals service, yesterday we got this...

News Releases
JUNE 19, 2013
4 arrested, charged in $1.5 million bank fraud, money laundering scheme 

MIAMI – Four individuals were arrested Tuesday and charged with various counts of bank fraud, money laundering and wire fraud. The charges resulted from an investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation, the Florida Department of Insurance Fraud and the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Eduardo Hernandez Jr., 32, of Miami, Alexander Orriols, 43, of Miami Beach, Jose Arias, 50, of Miami, and Milena Hernandez, 30, of Miami, were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
According to the indictment, the defendants engaged in a bank fraud scheme using straw buyers as loan applicants to obtain loans using false financial information and documentation. To execute the scheme, the defendants allegedly recruited and persuaded individuals to apply for boat loans from companies owned or controlled by the defendants. They would then submit the loan applications to financial institutions. The applications included false information regarding down payments and deposits made to the defendants’ companies.
The defendants also allegedly falsified the straw buyers’ financial records, including IRS W-2 forms. They then submitted these false financial documents to financial institutions. Based on these false documents and misrepresentations, the financial institutions approved and issued loans to the straw buyers.
The indictment also alleges that the defendants paid the straw buyers a portion of the loan proceeds as payment for their service and to cover some of the monthly payments on the loans in order to keep the fraud from being detected. As a result, the defendants diverted the loan proceeds for their personal use and used some of the money to further the fraud scheme.
If convicted, the defendants face possible maximum statutory sentences of 30 years in prison for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and substantive bank fraud; 20 years in prison for money laundering conspiracy, substantive money laundering and wire fraud; and 10 years in prison for substantive money laundering.

FUCK YES!  Just to make sure that I wasn't imagining things, I went over to the federal bureau of prisons website to check whether or not Mr. Orriols was in custody...

NICE!  I hate to gloat at another mans misfortune, but I hope that this mf rots in jail.  Like the title of today's post says, patience and perseverance finally pays off.  Despite not having written about the original cast of characters that were the genisis of this blog, I haven't forgotten about them and I wont till everyone of them is sitting behind bars contemplating how they got there, especially that fat fuck that fled to Panama after I outed him!

It's about who you know...

There's no doubt, down here in Miami, it's all about who you know.  For those of you that have been following our Airways Auto Tag agency story, it's blatantly obvious that if the owner of the tag agency was anyone other than the wife of of a police chief, things would have gone down completely differently.  Think about it, when the shit hit the fan, is there any doubt that the chief made a few phone calls and pushed the investigation along?  Does anyone believe that the cops that came out and investigated the case weren't in one way shape or form biased because the alleged victim of the theft was none other than a sitting police chief's wife?  Not to mention a police chief that had long standing personal ties with our own state attorney?  Did the poor tellers that were charged have a shot at getting their stories heard or was their fate sealed before the detectives asked them a single question?  We all know the answer to that, obviously being married to a police chief has it's advantages, especially when the cops (even from an unrelated jurisdiction) are investigating your business.

Bernardo Barrera

So what's the point here other than stating the obvious?  We all know it pays to have friend or family in high places, especially when the cops are looking at you under the microscope, it's these kinds of connections that can ultimately keep you out of harms way.  This brings us back to the first story we covered on our blog, the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case.  Years ago we picked apart just about every claim that Mr. Barrera made about his identity being stolen, we even went so far as to hire our own handwriting expert who proved that Mr. Barrera's actual signature was all over the fraudulent loan documents therefore making him an indispensable member of the organized scheme to defraud, you have to ask yourself though, with the overwhelming mountain of evidence that we compiled against this man who claimed his identity was stolen, how the hell did the cops and the state attorneys office buy his story hook line and sinker?  I could never understand how they ate up every word Mr. Barrera fed them and even after he was proven to be a liar, the state still refuses to go after him, how could this be?  Simple, Mr. Barrera himself tells us how he was able to pull all this off literally in the first page of his deposition from the criminal trial that arose from the alleged theft of his identity...

There you have it!  According to Mr. Barrera his brother is the attorney general of Panama!  How many times do you think he told the police and the state attorney that through the course of the investigation and the subsequent criminal case?  Any doubt that "my brother is the attorney general of Panama" somehow changed the states perception of the case against Mr. Barrera no matter how much evidence there was against him?  


Like I said before, it's all about who you know...

Credibility.

Credibility, it's a simple concept.  If you have no credibility, nothing you say means anything.  For instance, the three tellers in the Airways Auto Tag Agency maintain their innocence have no credibility when on the other end of the deal they have the chief of police's wife screaming that they stole tens of thousands of dollars.  As the guy behind this blog, I have no credibility either, whether you believe I target people that I have an ax to grind with or maybe I'm just making shit up cause I'm some disgruntled fool that was slighted by the legal system.  That's why when I make an accusation or try to tell a story, I back everything up, ad nauseum, with documents so there's no doubt what I'm saying is true.  Somehow though, when the state has a victim that's been clearly discredited and stripped of all credibility, they still stick by their victim while refusing to see the truth about what's going on.  Case in point, the protagonist in my first mortgage fraud story, Bernardo Barrera.


Mr. Barrera tells the cops, namely Detective Jorge Baluja then of the Miami Dade Mortgage Fraud Task Force, that his identity had been stolen and used in the commission of a massive mortgage fraud scheme.  Now on the surface this might of made some sort of sense but I dug through the evidence and found the following facts that severely undermined Mr. Barrera's credibility...

• Mr. Barrera had committed mortgage fraud during the purchase of his own home.
• Just month before his identity was allegedly stolen in this mortgage fraud, someone else had stolen his identity for another fraud that he'd forgotten to tell the police about.
• Citimortgage, the lender that funded the fraudulent scheme had sent several letters to Mr. Barrera at his primary residence regarding this fraudulent mortgage even before it was funded.

Those are just some of the facts that we'd found that should have given any detective or prosecutor pause before moving forward with such a backwards and screwed up case.  Most importantly though, after examining a copy of Mr. Barrera's credit report, I found that in the interim between the first instance of identity theft  and the second involving the fraudulent home purchase and mortgage, Mr. Barrera pays off all his credit cards!  We're not talking just a few hundred dollars, we're talking several thousand dollars, that should have stricken law enforcement as really bizarre as Mr. Barrera had been unemployed for nearly two years at that point.  How many people do you guys know that pay off all their credit cards when they're unemployed? 


The best part of this farce was that during depositions, Mr. Barrera made no secret of paying his credit cards off, he openly admitted to it and explained that he was able to do so because his ex-wife refinanced their marital home and for some reason or another gave him the proceeds of that transaction with which he decided to pay off all his loans.  Wonderful right?  This is where we get down to the credibility issue again, Mr. Barrera's credibility should already have been suspect at this point so why would law enforcement believe anything he says now?  His ex-wife's refinance and generous cash gift to Mr. Barrera is easy to prove, it's simply a matter of going over to the County Clerk's office and checking the public records, a quick search under her name, Maribel Barrera or her maiden name Maribel Zevallos, yields the following...

The Barrera's were divorced in 2006 and Mr. Barrera paid off all his credit cards between October 2007 and January 2008.  As you can see in this screen shot from the Clerk's office, there have been no new mortgages on their marital home since 2003 therefore completely invalidating Mr. Barrera's claims of paying off his credit cards with proceeds of his wife's refinancing of their former marital home therefore further stripping any and all credibility that Mr. Barrera may have had.


So here's my question, how can a man who's been proven time and time again to lie regarding the circumstances of this alleged fraud be taken seriously by law enforcement?  How could they create a case and arrest innocent people based on the testimony of a fraudster who we've proven has done nothing but lie every time he's given a statement?  How could law enforcement be blind to this seasoned con man's lies?  I've spent the last three plus years of my life trying to figure it out.  Isn't the cops job to find the truth?  Just how much bullshit can you feed these guys before they admit they fucked up and rectify their mistakes?  Isn't it ironic that they can build a case on total bullshit and lies then the defendants have to defend themselves with facts and the truth?


Perhaps this kind of crap could have worked decades ago when there wasn't a wealth of information available online like access to property records.  With this kind of information available at your fingertips, could anyone be stupid enough to lie about something like this to the cops?

"I had to get second mortgages on my house to keep the business going"

We'll investigate that claim tomorrow...


  

Nearly four years later, case #F-08-036522-D comes to an end.

In an anticlimactic hearing yesterday morning at 9 am, the state announced that it's dropping the charges against the final remaining defendant in the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case.  Just like that, in less than 15 seconds, the state attorneys office told Judge Thomas Rebull that they weren't going to proceed with the case against the "D" defendant that prosecutor William Kostrzewski railroaded nearly a year after the original arrests were made bringing to an end what could be described as one of the most botched mortgage fraud investigations on record.  What's really disgraceful about this last defendant even being charged was that by prosecutor Kostrzewski's own admission, he knew he was innocent but was only charged so he could then testify against the other defendants.  In other words, hey, fuck you, I've gone ahead and thrown your ass in jail even though I knew you had nothing to do with the crimes I'm charging you with so that you could come on in and spill the beans against the other defendants.  Some moral code prosecutor  Kostrzewski abides by, right?

Bernardo Barrera

Basically what did the states case in against this defendant was the insurmountable mountain of evidence against the man that Prosecutor Kostrzewski identified as the victim of this fraud, Bernardo Barrera.  Early on in our blog we identified several problems with Mr. Barrera's assertion of not being involved with the fraud that was at the center of the case but the icing on the cake came when we decided to go ahead and submit all the documents pertaining to the fraud to a handwriting expert.  I gathered up samples of Mr. Barrera's signatures from his divorce paperwork and the documents relating to the purchase of his primary residence, these samples along with signature samples from the purchase and loan documents from the mortgage that he alleged he was not involved with were all bundled together and sent off to a handwriting expert, check out the results of the handwriting experts analysis for yourselves...

Notice that this handwriting analysis was done on December 10, 2010, almost a year and half before the charges were dropped.  So there you have it, according to the handwriting expert, Mr. Barrera signed all the documents pertaining to the purchase and subsequent mortgage of the house that was at the center of the states case, the same house and mortgage that he vehemently denied, under oath I may add, that he had absolutely nothing to do with.  I spent roughly $1,300 on expert that the state should have used before they charged anyone in this case.  

Ultimately it was this handwriting analysis that ended up getting the case dropped against this last remaining defendant.  What's really a shame about this case, that is aside from innocent people's lives being unnecessarily destroyed is the fact that the biggest fraud perpetrated throughout this story was the fraud that Bernardo Barrera committed against the court by lying about his involvement in this fraudulent home purchase and subsequent fraudulent mortgage used in the commission of this fraud.  What's worse?  The fact that prosecutor Kostrzewski's bungling of this case ended up embarrassing the state attorney's office and the then newly formed Mortgage Fraud Task Force.  Luckily the state attorneys office removed this inept jackass and replaced him with prosecutors that were able to rectify the mistakes he made.

Eric Padron

I have to wonder, now that the state is well aware of Bernardo Barrera's involvement in this fraud are they going to hold him responsible and charge him not only for mortgage fraud but for perjuring himself throughout this case?  Think about what this case has cost the state as well as the defendants who were eventually exonerated, shouldn't he be made to pay?  Only time will tell.  In the mean time, congratulations are in order for Attorney Eric Padron who worked diligently and earned this hard fought victory for his client as well as the head of the state attorneys mortgage fraud unit, David Sherman, who rectified the errors that were made by prosecutor Kostrzewski.

So what now to the two assclowns that put this case together?  What say you Mr. Kostrzewski?  How about you Detective, sorry Officer Baluja?  How do you feel about your victim now or this steaming pile of shit you called a case?  And what about you Mr. Barrera?  I know you read this blog from your hideout in Panama, remember what I told you a few years back, I'm not gonna stop till your ass is behind bars.  Take that shit to the bank.

Major development expected in the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case today...

Amazingly enough, over four years later, the state is still dealing with the first mortgage fraud case that we wrote about, the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case.  For those of you who aren't familiar with this case, go back and type in "Bernardo Barrera" in the search box on the upper left corner of the page and enjoy.  In a nutshell this case was hastily thrown together in the middle of the night by a morally, ethically and mentally deficient prosecutor named Bill Kostrzewski who used an even dumber cop named Jorge Baluja to do his bidding.  Of the three people originally charged back in October 3, 2008, one immediately cut a deal and got several years probation (essentially his attorney sold him out and didn't defend him), the other eventually after several plea negotiations ended up doing several years in prison while the third defendant, despite the prosecutors best efforts, ended up getting all the charges dropped against her.


What I neglected to tell you guys was that there was a fourth defendant, one that wasn't charged until nearly a year after the original arrests.  Once the prosecutor on the case realized that he had royally fucked up and saw the case falling apart around him, he decided to bring in a fourth defendant almost exactly a year to the day of the first arrests.  I never mentioned anything about this fourth defendant because I didn't wan't to jeopardize his defense, needless to say, there was no case against this fourth defendant yet somehow it's taken the state almost three years to come to that conclusion.  From what I've been told, it looks like the state will drop the charges against this poor guy today.  I'm headed to court this morning to see what happens.  We'll report tomorrow...

Miami's best blogs, setting the record straight.

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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...

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

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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!

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...

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

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.

And then there was none, the last of the original defendants from the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case goes to jail...

As the title states, yesterday the last remaining defendant from the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case, John Arthur Romney, entered his plea and was sent to jail.  I don't have the specifics of the plea yet, all we know is that the state dropped the organized scheme to defraud and the identity theft charges while Mr. Romney pleaded guilty to the Grand Theft charge.  I find that especially troubling, that of the three defendants originally charged with "stealing" Mr. Barrera's identity for the commission of this fraud, none were successfully prosecuted for Identity Theft.  What does that tell you?  Draw your own conclusions.

While I feel no joy in seeing a young man in the prime of his life being sent off to jail, I have some level of satisfaction that there was finally justice done in light of the dozens of other mortgage fraud cases that we've discussed where the state couldn't do better than getting a probation sentence for the offenders.  I honestly believe that with a stiff sentence (30 months in state prison from what I understand) for Mr. Romney, the state is sending a message to potential fraudsters, screw around with white collar crime and your ass will be going to jail.  I'd like to commend the State Attorneys Office for having the determination to stick it out and finally achieve a just outcome in light of the severity of the crime that was committed and also to congratulate Assistant State Attorney Stephen LeClair who took over the case from the previous prosecutor as well as the head of the recently formed Mortgage Fraud unit in the State Attorneys office, Assistant State Attorney David Sherman, for achieving this conviction.


Good luck Mr. Romney, I hope you have time to reflect on the damage you've done to yourself, your family and the others that you senselessly dragged into this mess.  I pray that you and your family are able to get through the next 30 months with as little suffering as possible.

Here we are at the end of another decade.

Amazing isn't it?  Seems like it went by so fast.  I'd like to thank all of our readers for following along with all our incessant ramblings over the last 18 months or so, the fact that we still have material to write about is a sad commentary on the state of the cases that we've been discussing.  Regardless, we've made lots of progress in finding out the real stories behind some of the mortgage fraud cases we've written about and along the way pissed off a lot of people, I can only imagine how upset some of the cops we've written about must get after reading one of our blog posts on the way to work...
 


Honestly though, I know there are a lot of people in law enforcement that think I'm out to embarrass or humiliate them,  that's not the case at all.  In fact my only intention with this blog is to point out the gross miscarriages of justice that have occurred during the course of the cases that we've written about.  If there's anything to be embarrassed or ashamed of it's got nothing to do with us and everything to do with the way they handled the cases that we've written about.


Regardless, I'd like to wish all our readers a happy new year, especially those from the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the FBI, the MDPD, the Florida Department of Management Services (if you're confused and think that might be you, google your IP and you'll understand) and the fine folks at Citibank/Citimortgage who log on here almost daily.  I almost forgot, to our most beloved reader from Panama, I promise 2011 will be a very interesting year for you.

Happy New Year folks!

Did Citimortgage ever get reimbursed from the title insurance policy from the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud?

Pretty good question right?  We're all to familiar with the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud by now, if you buy the states story of Mr. Barrera's identity being stolen for the commission of a nearly $500,000 mortgage fraud then it stands to reason that when all is said and done that the lender could go after the closing agents title insurance and be reimbursed in full for their losses correct?  After all, according to the states arrest affidavit it's the attorney that helped set up this nefarious scheme so why not, right?

Last July we mentioned how strange it seemed for Citimortgage to classify this transaction as a "Fraud" as quickly as they had even though there were documents in their own files that suggested that Mr. Barrera may have indeed been involved in the fraud.  This made no sense at the time until we suggested that they were either going to be reimbursed by their own insurance once they classified the case as an identity theft or fraud or as prosecutor Kostrzewski suggested in his plea agreement with defendant Michael Martinez that the restitution was to be paid back to...

...to victim Citi Mortgage, Inc., or to its successor(s), or, in the event that Citi Mortgage, Inc., is reimbursed for its loss by title insurance, to its insurer of title.

Ok, makes sense right?  If indeed this case was a clear cut instance of identity theft it only makes sense that the lender could be reimbursed by the title insurance issued by the closing agent who officiated this nefarious transaction, correct?  Come to find out though that the claim that Citimortgage put against the title insurance for the Oak Avenue home was denied.  Anyone remember this email that we posted a while back?

This email was from the attorney that represented the title insurance company, turns out because of the evidence at hand, Citimortgage's claim against the title insurance was DENIED.  I wonder why?  Perhaps that last sentence clarifies things a bit..

...Mr. Barrera has perpetrated a fraud on the court in his filings, I intend to advise the judge about the issues you raised.

WHO ME?

When tourists, straw buyers and exotic car rentals go WRONG!

It's tough to be all full of piss and vinegar this time of year, so we'll leave off this Christmas eve with a police report that accurately describes the type of "exotic car rental" business that we described in Wednesday's post.  This police report regarding a wrecked exotic rental car has all the elements of an illegal car rental company that we discussed the other day, straw buyers, financial fraud, insurance fraud, etc...  Take a look for yourselves, I apologize in advance for this disjointed shitty presentation of the police report, I was in a rush.  As always, click on the image for a larger view...

There's a lot to digest there, take a second look and then you might be able to fathom how stupid the people involved were.  By the time they were done the idiots involved staged at least three accidents and from the looks of it filed four different police reports, three of which were bogus.  Sounds stupid doesn't it?  Sophomoric?  Consider this isn't just some random police report of a moronic crime that I pulled out of the court files, the players involved in this escapade who can't seem to differentiate their asses from their elbows were also responsible for tens of millions of dollars of mortgage fraud and may even have some link to the Barrera mortgage fraud case.  Interesting huh?  More coming...


Until then folks, have a Merry Christmas!

A brilliant comment from one of our readers regarding the Cat Killer case.

We left off last Friday discussing the alleged Cat Killer and mentioned that both he and his family are looking to file a civil lawsuit against the Miami Dade Police Department and the State Attorneys Office.  One of our readers left this insightful comment...

john lichtenstein said...

The analysis by the vet was a disaster. They did an analysis they were incompetent to do, didn't ask for advice from anyone competent, claimed there was a crime when there was no crime, and ended up costing the city a lot of money and hurting this kid. And it is frankly amazing that these vets don't know what a cat looks like after a dog eats it. In any sane society, careers would end over a mistake like this.

December 20, 2010 2:12 PM

Brilliant, I have to agree.  Regardless of the fact that the prosecutors ended up doing the right thing by dropping the charges, should this case have ever seen the light of day?  How could the vet analyzing the corpses missed the fact that there were animal bites all over the dead cats?  Was the police department so desperate to put a warm body in front of the public to calm them down in light of all these dead cats turning up that they circumvented normal logical police work?  Did the vet that concluded the Tyler Weinman killed these cats really even look at the corpses or did he rubber stamp the cops conclusions that the boy was guilty?


So what's this Cat Killer business have to do with our story?  Think about it for a moment, analysis of the evidence was a disaster...

Barrera Loan Application for Oak Avenue Home

Thank You Letter From Citi Mortgage to Bernardo Barrera for the Purchase of the Oak Avenue Home

Florida Mortgage Broker Contract With Real Bernardo Barrera Signature

Incompetence from those investigating the crime...

Our esteemed commenter goes on to say that he's amazed that the vet doesn't know what a cat looks like after a dog eats it, we can say the same thing about the Barrera mortgage fraud case, how the hell could cops and prosecutors not recognize a simple Straw Buyer mortgage fraud?  Lastly he leaves us with this bit...

In any sane society, careers would end over a mistake like this.

Exactly.  The charges are dropped, the kid goes on his way and everyone's lives are supposed to go back to normal yet the cops who created this mess go unpunished.   Good luck with that.

An early Christmas present, the Straw Buyer keeps a promise to Bernardo Barrera...

This morning I was ready to discuss the ramifications of the fraudulent addendum that we mentioned yesterday but we got something in the mail that's going to completely change the course of our blog. For the astute among who have been following our blog it's obvious, nothing groundbreaking, just an affirmation of what we already suspected. Before we discuss this new development, we're going to consult with legal counsel and run it past the proper authorities, so be patient.

Now, about that promise we made to Bernardo Barrera, the man who claimed his identity was stolen for the purpose of defrauding CitiMortgage. A few weeks before the inception of our blog, I managed to track down Mr. Barrera and get him on the phone, the tone of his voice spoke volumes, he certainly didn't sound like the innocent victim that he made himself out to be to the police and the courts. Mr. Barrera checks our blog three times a day at the very least from his new digs in Panama, so I'm going to address this bit to Mr. Barrera himself. Bernie, do you remember what I told you on the phone that day back in the summer of 2009? I told you that I wasn't going to rest until I put your fat ass in jail, I told you that I knew what you had done and was going to make sure that even if it was the last thing I ever did, I was going to make sure you were brought to justice. Think back on that conversation Mr. Barrera and remember what happened back in the end of 1989, think back to Operation Just Cause...

Think back Bernie to that other assclown that thought he was safe in Panama...

Like I told you Bernie, I'm coming for you and I'm not going to do it with the lightweights at the MDPD or the State Attorneys Office who have a vested interest in hiding your complicity, I'm gonna be coming with the feds.

Doing the job that Detective Baluja and Prosecutor Kostrzewski never did, more fun with checks regarding the Barrerra mortgage fraud.

In case you guys haven't noticed, I've become rather obsessed with the Barrera Mortgage fraud case.  I'm not exactly sure why, if nothing else perhaps because of the tremendous amount of ineptitude exhibited by the lead detective that was investigating the case, Jorge Baluja and his master, Assistant State Attorney Bill Kostrzewski.  In their haste to throw together a case we've seen them both break laws, violate people's civil rights, fabricate evidence, etc, yet just when I think I've seen the worst of it, something else pops up and leaves me floored.

A week or so ago, I was rereading the original arrest affidavit that was signed by Detective Baluja and I believe authored by none other that ASA Kostrzewski when I came across this bit...

That part about no payments being made that I underlined in red really seemed strange to me...

No payments whatsoever have been made on the loan.

Something just didn't seem right about that part, I mean after all, the people involved in this fraud who made away with over $400,000 in ill gotten gains were far too smart to not make payments on the loan at least for a year in order to escape suspicion of being a fraudulent transaction.  So why would a sophisticated con man make such a simple mistake and almost certainly guarantee that his nefarious scheme was going to be found out even if the man whose identity they used for the fraud never claimed his identity was stolen?  Something seemed haywire here.

So where did that leave me?  Well, the first step was to go through all the case files again and see if there was any evidence of payments being made on the Barrera mortgage for the home located at 3390 Oak Avenue, no dice.  In fact everything in the files suggested that there had never been a single payment made which jives with what the state had presented.  Something still didn't seem right to me though.  My next step was to figure out a way to get access to records from Citibank aka Citimortgage which funded the loan in the Barrera mortgage fraud.  I realized that I had a Citibank Visa card so I went down to my local Citibank branch and decided to talk to someone in customer service, after befriending an employee at the bank, I asked whether or not they could answer some questions for me regarding a home mortgage that was in default.  Before we start, let's take a look at the good faith estimate for that mortgage to refresh our memories...

Bernardo Barrera Good Faith Estimate From Citi Mortgage for Oak Avenue Home

There you have it, the good faith estimate for the home located at 3390 Oak Avenue which was financed by CitiMortgage loan number 002005062091 with a mortgage payment of $2,900 without escrows and $2,979.58 with escrows for Hazard insurance, the same house that was at the center of the Barrera Mortgage fraud case.  So the lovely young customer service rep tells me she'll get back to me in a few days if she finds any information regarding the payment history of this loan, lo and behold a few days later I get these three gems via email...

Would you look at that?  Those three checks total $2,900 which just happens to be the amount of the mortgage payment for the Oak Avenue home's mortgage and all three check numbers have the handwritten loan number on them the matches the loan number for the Oak Avenue's home mortgage.  What a coincidence? 

The question that I'm left with after discovering the existence of these checks is WHY THE FUCK AM I DOING THE WORK THAT THE STATE WAS SUPPOSED TO DO?  If indeed the states goal was to find the man who "allegedly" stole Bernardo Barrera's identity for the commission of this crime, then why didn't the state obtain this critical evidence which would have lead directly to the people behind this case of grand theft, organized scheme to defraud and identity theft?!

For fucks sake Detective Dipshit, I'm some jackass with a blog on the last page of the internet and I've done a better job investigating this case than you have.  Detective Baluja and ASA Kostrzewski, are you going to make me go to the bank and get the surveillance videos and find out who purchased these checks as well or do you guys think you can handle that?!