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

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!

Veldora Arthur wants her federal mortgage fraud indictment dismissed!

Sure, why not?  While cruising the court dockets last  night, I came across this gem of a motion from federally indicted City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur's attorney...

Motion to Dismiss Veldora Arthur

Nice try but don't hold your breath waiting for the judge to grant this motion.  It looks like after all the defendants attorneys had agreed to postpone the trial date due to the 14,000+ pages of discovery, Ms. Arthur's new attorney has now decided that somehow despite the fact that the defense attorneys were unanimous in their request for a postponement Ms. Arthur's rights to a speedy trial have been violated!  Good luck with that.  The prosecutors answer with this...

Govts Response to Motion to Dismiss Patrick Brinson

So who's this new character in the Veldora Arthur mortgage fraud scheme, Patrick Brinson?  And what about this new attorney?  We'll discuss tomorrow, you'd be surprised who Mr Brinson is linked to.  Regardless, you can count on this case going to trial in ten days...