Freedom of speech? Just watch what you say!

Our regions preeminent legal blogs are up in arms because the Florida bar has gone after one of their fellow bloggers in Broward county.  The Justice Building Blog, South Florida Lawyers Blog and the Southern District of Florida Blog put together a joint post yesterday addressing their displeasure withe the Florida Bar's actions against attorney Bill Gelin who runs the Broward JAA blog.  From their joint post...

You lose your rights, not with a bang, but with a whimper. One small encroachment after another. A bureaucrat pushes the edges here, a prosecutor challenges the boundaries in a few cases there. No one says or does anything and then you look up and suddenly a cherished right is gone.
Nothing is more insidious and dangerous to our constitutional rights than a bureaucrat who, under the cover of a government agency, seeks to intimidate someone.

I couldn't have said it better myself especially in light of the recent scandals with the AP News phone records and the IRS mess.  While the bar is a big deal to the lawyers who run those blogs, it doesn't mean shit to me, even though they have come after me in the past.  What makes this mess hit home for me is that I was targeted in a similar fashion a few years back.  For those of you who have followed our blog from its inception, you may remember we conducted our blog anonymously for the first couple of years of it's existence.  Back then we took great joy in ripping apart cases that the State Attorneys office and the local police departments were royally fucking up, specifically cases that were investigated by former detective Jorge Baluja of the Miami Dade PD and that asshat of all asshat's assistant state attorney Bill Kostrzewski.

Back then I made such a fool of ASA Kostrzewski that revealing my identity became an obsession for this inept career prosecutor who should have lost his job years ago.  Things reached a boiling point when I watched him make a fool of himself and subsequently get berated by Judge Mary Barzee at which point I couldn't contain myself and started laughing at him  in open court.  After the hearing, prosecutor Kostrzewski (AKA Special K) chased me down the hallways of the courthouse and confronted me while going down the escalator.  While I resisted engaging in his hysterical high fagotry especially since the ruckus he created attracted the attention of the cops and security guards that populated the lobby of the courthouse , I simply responded with "Nice job Bill, see you next time!".

That was all well and good, that is until a few hours later when I received an alarming email from the company that hosts the domain name for this blog (www.thestrawbuyer.com), now keep in mind up until the receipt of this email, no one knew who was behind this blog, believe it or not, not even my family and friends.  As always, click on the image to enlarge...

You can imagine my reaction...

The instant I read the email, specifically the part that stated "We have not complied because the subpoena had some invalid information listed on it" I knew it was my favorite prosecutor who was behind it.  Forget about my first amendment rights to write whatever the fuck I want about whoever the fuck I want, this asshole was further violating my constitutional rights by sending a bullshit subpoena with no legal basis to GKG.net to find out my real identity!  Remember, I was doing nothing wrong and was not involved in any of the cases that I was writing about, so where does this asshole get off trying to fuck me like this?  What legitimate use did uncovering my identity have?  FUCK!

We'll continue the discussion tomorrow, with that said, a simple bar complaint doesn't seem that bad now does it?  Also, for those anonymous bloggers out there, keep in mind, your identity is only one illegal subpoena away...

Going back a few years...

Before we get into the letter that City of South Miami Police Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro's attorney sent me, I think it's best to go back a few years to a post we made back in 2009 where we discussed how a detective from the Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud Task Force, Jorge Baluja, couldn't even execute the mortgage on his own home correctly.  Check it out here.  Ironically that same idiot detective who couldn't figure out how to execute his own mortgage correctly despite investigating mortgage and real estate fraud as detective, is the same idiot who years later made the case and the subsequent arrests in the Airways Auto Tag Agency boondoggle.  

So what's the big deal about all this?  Well, if you go back and take a look at the post, I included a photo of the detectives home that I got from Google Maps...

So what, right?  Our post on the subject was covered by photographer rights blog "Photography is Not a Crime" as well because of the photo that we posted...

And the blogger claims that Baluja botched his own mortgage, making him unqualified to conduct a proper investigation into any alleged mortgage fraud.
And in that post, the blogger even goes as far as posting a photo of what is supposedly Baluja’s house, which if you remember, that is what got prompted police to arrest a Virginia blogger.
However, he did not list the address and he simply used a Google Images photo instead of taking it himself.

Lol.  According to my sources within the MDPD the detective that I wrote about, Jorge Baluja, was enraged by my posting of this photo and the subsequent humiliation he suffered for not being able to execute his own mortgage correctly.  Despite all his please with the police department and the state attorneys office to take action against me, no one was willing to do so as I didn't break any laws by posting a photo of his house.  Now understand, law enforcement officers go through great lengths to hide their home addresses and other sensitive information for obvious reasons.  There are procedures in place with the county clerk to actually delete their addresses and any records that have sensitive information from publicly accessible searches.  So how did I find the detectives address?  A simple Google search turned up his address, less than ten seconds of searching just like that.

Now, fast forward a few years and we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the mess the City of South Miami police chief.  During our research into the chief's misconduct with his wife's tag agency, a simple search of the State of Florida secretary of state showed several instances where the chief's wife listed their home address on corporate documents.  There was no nefarious schemes I used to obtain sensitive information, in fact it was the chief and his wife's disregard for their own safety despite the measures the state affords law enforcement officers to hide their information that made it simple to reveal their home address.

With that said, tomorrow we'll discuss a letter that the Chief's attorney sent me detailing my alleged misdeeds...

Party time, another anniversary...

I've been feeling a bit under the weather lately therefore the lack of posts over the last week.  I started to get my shit together this afternoon when I realized that tomorrow is October 3, which would make it the fifth anniversary of the Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud Task Force's first case and also the fourth anniversary of the arrests in the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case that turned my family's life inside out. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the Barrera mortgage fraud 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's everyone now?  As we mentioned before, Mr. Barrera after selling whatever he had in the United States, hauled ass and escaped to his native Panama safe from extradition to the United States.  How about the assclown detective that put together the bullshit case?  From what I've been told, he's been demoted several times, most recently to driving a marked patrol car in the Northside District of Miami Dade County.  That's a far cry from his days as a detective on the MDPD Economic crimes unit, isn't it?  How about that dipshit prosecutor, Bill Kostrzewski, who tried to prosecute the case?  I'm told that he's been taken off any meaningful prosecutions and relegated to petty bullshit economic crimes cases.  Nice.  So much for that headline case he put together that appeared all over the news early that October back in 2008.

What amazes me the most though since I started writing this blog is how some criminal prosecutions make headlines yet others manage to escape the spotlight.  When Mr. Kostrzewski went after my wife, somehow both he and the state attorneys office managed to get a press release to anyone in the media with a pulse, yet after following such cases for four plus years now I can't believe how many other cases that should have been in the media somehow were never mentioned.  A perfect example would be the Veldora Arthur mortgage fraud case.  There wasn't a single peep about that case until we broke it here on our blog.  I wonder why?  Wasn't a City of Miami assistant fire chief getting federally indicted for millions of dollars worth of fraud newsworthy?

I've come to realize over the last few years that the main ingredient in keeping this blog going is anger, specifically my anger towards those in law enforcement and the state attorneys office that abuse their powers to destroy innocent people's lives in order to further their own goals.  Need examples?  How about the three tellers that were railroaded Detective Baluja in the Airways Auto Tag case as a favor to the City of South Miami's police chief?  Can you think of an abuse of power worse than that? 

So what now?  Four years after the "headline case" that prosecutor Kostrzewski and detective Baluja put together was filed, have we achieved anything?  I like to think we have.  I have to believe that we played some part in getting Mr. Baluja demoted and I know that we are, at least in part, responsible for getting prosecutor Kostrzewski thrown off the mortgage fraud task force within the state attorneys office.  Is that enough?  I think not.  We have some more work to do, I'm going to start talking about some of the things the state attorneys office did to me over the last few years and for shits and grins, we're going to try to get at least one member of the Baluja clan arrested.  Stay tuned...

The slam dunk case against the Airways Auto Tag Agency tellers...

It's been a while since we've discussed the Airways Auto Tag case, so let's do a brief rundown of the case...

• We start off by learning that our old friend, MDPD Detective Jorge Baluja, is still busy screwing things up.
• Off to the friendly neighborhood tag agency to renew our tag only to find out that three of the tellers in the tag agency had recently been arrested by none other than Detective Jorge Baluja who has the dubious distinction of not being able to investigate his own way out of a wet paper bag.
• A little digging nets us a police report where Detective Baluja alleges that three tellers from the tag agency were stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the agency by collecting money from the clients then voiding out the transactions afterwords and pocketing the money.
• Now we realize how improbable it is for tens of thousands of dollars to be missing in one day from such a small tag agency.
• We go through some of the accounting procedures at this tag agency and once again come to the conclusion that stealing anything let alone tens of thousands of dollars would be near impossible from such a small, tightly controlled operation.
• A quick glance at some of Detective Baluja's previous less than stellar investigative work.
• Now we realize that the owner of the tag agency is married to none other than the Police Chief of the City of South Miami, therefore calling into question the impartiality of any detective investigating the tag agency case.
• We ask whether or not there was probable cause to arrest the tellers that were charged.
• Strangely enough now we find out that there were several other people that had access to the accounting software other than the tellers that were arrested and that the owner of the tag agency also owns the company that wrote the accounting software and therefore had access to the tellers confidential access codes.
• The tag agency owners own testimony reveals that the company's finances were in such bad shape that she was looking to "turn it in" and walk away from the business.
• Things get even more bizarre, we learn that the tag agency owner's daughter in law abruptly left the her job at the agency right after the money went missing and that her son is also one of the owners of the company that writes the accounting software that the agency uses therefore adding one more person to the list of people other than the tellers that knew their confidential access codes.
• Even worse, despite the tag agency having security cameras all over the place, somehow they didn't catch any of the alleged thefts.
• The height of stupidity, the prosecutor in the criminal case against the three tellers tries to convince the court that this blog is in some way shape or form working in concert with the three tellers to harass the owner of the tag agency and therefore wanted the court to revoke the three tellers bonds.

Ok, that pretty much sums up where we left off a few months back.  To be perfectly honest though, we stopped writing about the case hoping that once a new prosecutor was assigned to the case after the previous prosecutor tried to get the tellers bonds revoked, the charges against the tellers were going to be dismissed.  Unfortunately, it didn't happen, so it seems like it's time to start shedding some light on this case again.


The crux of the states case against the three girls that were charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars from this tag agency was that once the individual transactions were processed, the tellers would later go back and cancel said transactions using their access codes in both the state system and the tag agencies internal computer systems and then pocket the money.  Fairly simple right?  In essence, by virtue of the tellers logging into the state and tag agency computers, they would leave an electronic fingerprint on all the transactions that would make it easy to identify who initiated the transactions and cancelled the transactions.  Simple enough, that is until we proved that there were several people that knew these so called "confidential passwords" the tellers used in the tag agency's computer system.


Now, in order to be perfectly clear, let's go through how the state proposes one of these transactions occurred:

1. First, the teller in question logs into the State of Florida computer system (that only the individual teller knows the password to) then processes the transaction.
2. Second, the teller in question logs into the tag agency's internal computer system (the one that the tag agency owner led the state to believe that only the tellers knew the passwords to that we later proved that several other people knew the passwords to) then processes the transaction generating a receipt for the customer.
3. At some point either later that day or early the next day, said teller logs back into the tag agency's computer system and cancels the transaction then subsequently pockets the money.

Fairly simple scheme right?  Now one thing we know for certain, the individual tellers are the only ones that know their passwords for the state of Florida computer system, no one else.  While we know that several other people that had access to the tag agency's computers other than the tellers that were arrested and that the owner of the tag agency also owns the company that wrote the accounting software and therefore had access to the tellers confidential access codes, the tellers are the only ones that could log into the state's system and generate receipts with their user ID's on them.  That's a really important point as we're about to discover, take a look at some excerpts from the receipts generated by the states computer system that were given to the state as part of the discovery in this case, specifically, pay attention to the initials outlined in red...

Now, for the sake of our discussion, I've omitted the rest of the receipt that contains an innocent customers personal information.  What's important here are the three letters that I've outlined in red as they identify the person who logged into the state's computer system and created these transactions.  In the instance of these two transactions, the identifying initials, IJM, don't belong to any of the tellers that were arrested, they belong to none other than Ileana Josefina Martinez de Castro, the owner of the tag agency and the City of South Miami's police chief's wife who claimed that tens of thousands of dollars were missing through the tellers nefarious schemes.  Remember that when it comes to the states computer system, only the person who is assigned the password knows their password, so if you're to believe the state's theory of this case, how did the owner of the tag agency processing these transactions fit in to there version of events?  Even worse, how did the dipshit detective who investigated this case not realize this horrendous error in his investigation?


While this revelation of the owner of the tag agency having her "electronic fingerprint" on some of the transactions in question doesn't absolve the three tellers that were charged of any guilt, it certainly does call into question the investigative work that ultimately culminated with the arrests of the three tag agency employees.  The same "electronic fingerprint" the detective used to build his case against the three tellers he arrested could have been used to implicate the owner of the tag agency!  WTF?

I'm getting sick and tired of writing about this stupid case.  Three innocent women are stuck dealing with this bullshit while the state takes its time fucking around.  More tomorrow.

So what's the big deal about the City of South Miami doing business with a tag agency that's owned by the Police Chief's wife?

So what is the big deal?  Besides the obvious appearance of a conflict of interest, is there anything else wrong with it?  Let's start by looking back at that list of tag agencies we looked at yesterday...

18655 S. Dixie Highway 33157 9.2 miles

5400 NW 22nd Avenue 33142 13.7 miles

1418 Ponce de Leon Blvd 33134 5.0 miles

30708 S. Federal Highway 33030 22.7 miles

11287 S. Dixie Highway 33156 4.0 miles

1375 NW 36th Street 33142 12.0 miles

8530 Bird Road 33155 4.9 miles

13710-K SW 56th street 33175 8.9 miles

20 West 49th Street 33012 15.3 miles

1834 NE Miami Gardens Drive 33179 21.8 miles

804 NW 183rd Street 33169 21.0 miles

140 West Flagler Street 33130 9.0 miles

1550 West 84th street 33014 15.6 miles

10930 West Flagler Street 33174 9.9 miles

800 71st street 33141 19.4 miles

313 NW 167 Street 33162 19.9 miles

12935 West Dixie Highway 33161 18.1 miles

8404 NW 103rd Street 33016 13.8 miles

6402 NW 186th Street 33015 19.3 miles

10201 Hammocks Blvd 33196 11.2 miles

11035 NW 27th Avenue 33167 21.2 miles

2517 SW 8th street 33135 6.2 miles

5759 SW 40th street 33155 2.6 miles

3636 NW 36th street 33142 8.8 miles

5747 NW 7th street 33126 5.6 miles

Now, I've gone ahead and marked the county owned tag agency in red, the distinction between this agency and the others is explained in the state's website...

"Private license plate agencies may charge additional fees associated with performing motor vehicle transactions"

Obviously as these are for profit businesses who are in business to make money therefore they'll be charging fees above and beyond whatever the state or county sponsored agencies would charge.  That's all well and good, now the next question that we're left with is why were four separate transactions for the City of South Miami costing nearly two thousand dollars?  Let's see what the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has to say about this...

Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Guide for Government Vehicles

Ok, now according to the FDHSMV, it seems like government vehicles are only charged $51 for a license plate (page one class # 97 from here) are exempt from initial registration fees (check #6 on page 7 here) as well as a whole other laundry list of fees and obviously state taxes.  So why were these four transactions so expensive?  More importantly though, why were these transactions conducted with a private tag agency rather than a county tag agency that would have saved the City of South Miami taxpayers the money they spent in fees that the county owned agency wouldn't have charged?  Even stranger, why did the city start doing business with this tag agency just a few months after the owners husband was hired on as the city's police chief?  Coincidence?  Maybe.  Conflict of interest?  

Now, onto something completely unrelated.  Everyone down here sits by and moans about how Dade County gave away the land for the American Airlines Arena, how they screwed over the taxpayer with the Marlins ballpark, etc.  While we're all sitting around waxing poetic about how they should have stopped the free land giveaways and the taxpayer funded boondoggles, the City of Miami is getting ready to give away the Miami Marine Stadium, our friend Al Crespo has done a fantastic job covering this mess, strangely enough, the local media is all but silent on the goings on regarding the giveaway of the City's last waterfront piece of property.  Take a moment and go to Al's site and see what's going on.

Some fun with Googlemaps and I need a favor, can someone help me find an auto tag agency near South Miami?

I'm a bit confused as it seems that there must be no auto tag agencies anywhere near the City of South Miami.  Let's say for example that I was standing in front of the City of South Miami's city hall, how far is the nearest tag agency?  Let's start by going through a list of tag agencies that I got online along with their proximity to City Hall in green thanks to Googlemaps...

18655 S. Dixie Highway 33157 9.2 miles

5400 NW 22nd Avenue 33142 13.7 miles

1418 Ponce de Leon Blvd 33134 5.0 miles

30708 S. Federal Highway 33030 22.7 miles

11287 S. Dixie Highway 33156 4.0 miles

1375 NW 36th Street 33142 12.0 miles

8530 Bird Road 33155 4.9 miles

13710-K SW 56th street 33175 8.9 miles

20 West 49th Street 33012 15.3 miles

1834 NE Miami Gardens Drive 33179 21.8 miles

804 NW 183rd Street 33169 21.0 miles

140 West Flagler Street 33130 9.0 miles

1550 West 84th street 33014 15.6 miles

10930 West Flagler Street 33174 9.9 miles

800 71st street 33141 19.4 miles

313 NW 167 Street 33162 19.9 miles

12935 West Dixie Highway 33161 18.1 miles

8404 NW 103rd Street 33016 13.8 miles

6402 NW 186th Street 33015 19.3 miles

10201 Hammocks Blvd 33196 11.2 miles

11035 NW 27th Avenue 33167 21.2 miles

2517 SW 8th street 33135 6.2 miles

5759 SW 40th street 33155 2.6 miles

3636 NW 36th street 33142 8.8 miles

5747 NW 7th street 33126 5.6 miles

That's rather interesting, so say for example that I was the City of South Miami and I needed a tag renewed, wouldn't logic dictate that I'd go to the closest tag agency to my office?  Or just to be a model City of South Miami employee, wouldn't it be great to patronize a tag agency in my own city?  Based on what I see there's a tag agency within the city limits located at 5759 SW 40th Street, just 2.6 miles away from City Hall! 


I was a bit bored last night and found myself trolling through the City of South Miami's website where I accidentally stumbled upon the city's finance department.  What's really neat about the city's website is that you can see an itemized list of the city's monthly financial reports, I took a quick look at a few months worth of reports and found this, I've outlined the most interesting part in red...

Would you look at that?  City of South Miami vendor number 3592 is none other than Airways Auto Tag Agency!  The very same auto tag agency that we've been talking about over the last few months!  After a cursory review of the city's financial reports, I managed to find four different transactions totaling $1,776.25 involving a private company that's owned by the city's police chief's wife.  Now, don't get me wrong, these transactions are more than likely legitimate, I honestly have no idea what these transactions are about but I do find it highly suspicious that the City of South Miami would chose to do business with this tag agency when there are seven other tag agencies that are closer to the city, even worse one of those seven is within their own city limits!  


I guess it doesn't hurt that the city's police chief's wife owns this tag agency.  We're going to have to do a little more digging to find out what's going on...

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...

Our friend Al Crespo gives us a shout out and we have to ask, why isn't anyone in the mainstream media covering the Airways Auto Tag scandal?

Our friend and collegue Al Crespo of the Crespo-Gram report gave us a shout out last week regarding our coverage of the Airways Auto Tag story.  You can read his article here.  Al brings up a great question regarding the story in his article...

In years past, this is a story that the Herald would have featured above the fold on it’s front page, because by any criteria, this is a major story about how 3 women were falsely setup, and how a Miami-Dade police detective and a Miami-Dade Assistant State’s Attorney should be considered co-conspirators in this scheme.
But, because a “blogger” is the one that uncovered it, chances are you’ll never see a mention of it on the Herald’s pages, because not only has the Miami Herald squandered it’s journalistic integrity when it comes to acting like a big city newspaper, but, when it comes to “bloggers,” they might cite us once in a while in passing, but what they won’t do is build off of the work and efforts of someone like Mike, and let the whole community know about this nasty deal.

So where is the Herald?  How about any of the local news stations? Is the story of three hardworking innocent women who were wrongly arrested by an incompetent cop not worth covering?  Perhaps the people watching what they try to pawn off as local news are more interested in hearing about Whitney Houston dying again and again rather than hearing a story about one of their own?  Where are all the investigative reporters?  Jim DeFede?  Hank Tester?  Jeff Weinsier?  Anyone?  I guess they're too busy working on breaking news...

Taking a closer look at the those close out sheets from the Airways Auto Tag Agency mess...

Yesterday we went over the "closeout sheets" that are at the center of the Airways Auto Tag Agency case.  These closeout sheets are used by the tellers to account for the money they turn in at the end of the day, the sheets allow the tellers and bookkeepers to break down what's in the tellers drawer by denomination, once all the money is accounted for, everything is totaled up for review then the sheet is signed by the teller and the bookkeeper.

 
The owner of the tag agency tells the state that the tellers entered erroneous information on these handwritten closeout sheets to cover up their alleged theft of tens of thousands of dollars.  Let's take another look at the closeout sheet from December 23, 2010, the date that the owner claims there was thousands of dollars missing, as always, click on the image to enlarge...

Ok, here we have a form that's filled out by hand simply inventorying what was in the tellers drawer for the day broken down by denomination and by check.  Simple enough.  According to the owner of the tag agency, Ileana Martinez de Castro, the agency checks these "close out" sheets for accuracy, scans them then destroys the originals.  Ok, so far so good.  The first problem that jumps out after a quick glance at the sheet is that the numbers don't make sense, IE eight quarters don't equal one dollar and four twenty dollar bills don't equal two hundred dollars.  Strange.  What's even stranger is that no one on the bookkeeping side of equation picked up on these simple mistakes that a second grader should have been able to recognize?  Even worse, whoever reviewed these closeout sheets didn't see this mistake till several months later when they realized there was all kinds of money missing?  That's hard to believe at the very least.

What set me off yesterday was Ms Castro's rambling testimony and her mention of something about lines on the sheet being distorted as a result of the scanning, that caused me to take a closer look.  I reexamined the closeout sheet again and found several issues, issues that I suppose Ms. Castro attributes to scanning.  Here is a another look at the closeout sheet with the anomalies pointed out by the red arrows...

Let's start with the item labeled "A", here's a closeup...

What we're looking at is the number "1" in the box that accounts for quarters.  Look at the top of the one where it meets the horizontal line, see anything strange?  See how the line on the top gets thinner just to the left and right of the one?  Now look to the left of the one and follow down, see what I see?  I've outlined it in red here...

See what I'm saying?  You can clearly see handwriting underneath what looks to be a cut and pasted image of the number "1".  Here are the two images side by side for comparison...

When you look at the two images side by side, it's clear that there's been some sort of alteration to this document.  Let's move on, now we're going to look at item "B"...

Now, what's bizarre about this item is that the number "2" we see here doesn't match the number "2" that we see anywhere else on the sheet.  For comparisons sake, I've collected all the number 2's from this sheet and put them side by side...

Does that number two look like it was written by the same hand?  Hardly.  Moving along to item "C"...

Once again we see a number that looks like it had something else underneath it.  Another anomaly attributed to scanning?  I don't know about that.  Now let's look at item "D"...

What happened to the line under the number two?  Another issue created by the scanning process or was there some sort of alteration here that obscured the line?  Oddly enough this is in the twenty dollar row where the math is screwed up as well.  Somehow this number two doesn't exactly match the other number two's that we know were written by the teller in question.  On to item "E"...

Now here we have two issues, first we have a handwritten number "3" that doesn't match the other number 3's on the closeout sheet...

...as well as a handwritten number "2" that doesn't match any other number 2's anywhere else on the sheet...

How did that happen?  Last but not least is this strange area towards the bottom of the sheet that I've circled in red and labeled  "noise"...

Could that simply have been "noise" generated by the scanning process or was there something written there that was poorly blocked out or altered leaving this mess on the scanned copy of the closeout sheet?  I don't know, perhaps this question is best left to a forensic document examiner.  What I can tell you is that something is definitely not kosher here, whether you look at each individual anomaly or all of them together, there is something wrong with this closeout sheet.  If the teller wanted to make up a bogus closeout sheet, she could have simply grabbed a blank one and put in the bogus numbers then turned it in.  


What we seem to have here is a closeout sheet that appears to be either digitally altered or whited out and altered by someone other than the tellers that were charged for stealing the money.  Why do I say so?  The difference in handwriting suggests that the person who originally filled out the closeout sheet was not the same one that went back in and put in the new numbers as evidenced by the different handwriting style.  These anomalies coupled  with the simple arithmetic errors that we're to believe went unnoticed till months later suggest that there is something nefarious going on here.  Like our old Italian painting from yesterday, when you look closely at this closeout sheet, someone is definitely getting fucked and it isn't a dog that's doing the fucking...

Details, details, details...

Almost all of the cases that we've written about since the inception of our blog are paperwork intensive.  There seems to be mountains and mountains of documents in each case, either documents and exhibits that the state turns over as part of the discovery process or voluminous deposition transcripts that easily exceed several hundred pages.  In these instances it seems utterly impossible to get a proper handle on whats going on in these cases considering the seemingly insurmountable pile of paperwork that accompanies each case.  Yet to fully understand these cases, you have to go through these documents over and over and over again. 


There's been several instances to date where I've looked at a specific document dozens if not hundreds of times and have noticed nothing then somehow miraculously after looking at the document for months on end, something literally just jumps off the page is if it was outlined in neon lights.  This seventeenth century painting of an Italian piazza is a perfect example, at first glance there's nothing unusual about the painting...

Nothing strange going on there, just an old painting with some buildings and some people, you could walk by this painting a thousand times and never notice anything, that is till you take a closer look...

The minute you focus in on the painting, you realize there's something in the middle of the painting just in front of the tower so you squint and take another look then BAM...

There it is, right in the middle of the damn painting, TWO DOGS HAVING SEX!  Once you see the two dogs having sex, you realize that there's a crowd of people in the painting all watching what the dogs are doing.  Now when I see the painting, the dogs are the first thing I see and to think I've seen this painting for years and never noticed the dogs!


So what's two dogs having sex in the middle of a several centuries old Italian painting have to do with our blog?  Luckily for us, the Airways Auto Tag case has very little in the way of documents in the states case file, what little I've been able to find on my own outside of the criminal case file consists mostly of transcripts of an unemployment compensation hearings where the tellers that were accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars and subsequently fired from their jobs at the tag agency were simply looking to collect their unemployment benefits.  Luckily for us, the owner of the tag agency, Ileana Martinez de Castro, fought vehemently to deny these girls their unemployment benefits, her testimony during these hearings has turned into a treasure trove of information that I believe will ultimately be used against her if this case ever goes to trial.


According to the state and the allegations made against the tellers by the owner of the tag agency, the three tellers that were charged were accused of stealing money from the tag agency by accepting cash from the customers then after the clients left with their tags, the state alleges that the tellers would go ahead and void the transactions and pocket the money.  As I've mentioned before, the tellers have cameras and supervisors constantly monitoring them as well as keeping track of every dollar that the tellers take in.  At the end of every day, the tellers are required to fill out "closing sheets" which are basically an itemized inventory of every dollar that the tellers have at the end of the day when they close out their drawers.  Here is an example of a blank closeout sheet from the tag agency...

Simple enough and easy to understand, it's nothing more than a way for the teller to inventory the money in their drawer, itemize the various denominations, total everything up, sign and date it.  Then I suppose who ever does the bookkeeping then checks for inaccuracies then signs and dates it themselves.  


Now, lets move on to the tag agency owner's testimony regarding these closing sheets during the unemployment hearing specifically the close out sheet from the day the alleged thefts occurred, December 23, 2010...

Ms. DeCastro:  Okay, the paper that she turned in is on Page 11.  Page 11 is in her own handwriting.  And, she says that she put the wrong amount of the bill because, obviously, four $20 bills do not add to $200.  But the amount of money that she put on the right hand side add up to $14, 835.82; her handwriting which she signed and date, herself.  All we do is scan it.  The reason it has those lines on it is because we were making copies of copies, in order to do a closeout sheet; therefore, it looks like that.  But, we scan everything exactly the way they turn it in, their page. 

Huh?  What?  This excerpt of Ms. DeCastro's testimony shows a weird trait that she exhibits throughout all the unemployment hearing transcripts, she seems to ramble on at the slightest provocation.  I didn't think anything of the closeout sheet in question, till I read her her testimony for the third time.  Anyone who's every been to a deposition or a hearing of this nature is told by counsel again and again, simply answer the questions with a yes or a no, don't volunteer anything, keep your answers short and simple.  In this case all this talk about the scanning of these closeout sheets and "those lines" that she mentions that appear on the closeout sheets as a result of the scanning really got me wondering so I picked up the closeout sheet from December 23, 2010 and took a closer look to try to figure out what Ms. DeCastro was talking about.  Take a look for yourselves, as always, click on the image to enlarge...

First off, we notice at the top of the page, the fax header is from Duane Morris, LLP which we've learned is the law firm that represents the tag agency therefore authenticating the document as being a genuine close out sheet from the tag agency.  Now, as we just read, the owner of the tag agency mentions something about lines "looking like that", I can only assume that what Ms. DeCastro is referring to is the slight distortion in the lines because ostensibly as a result of the scanning process.  Once we blow up the closeout sheet, it's easy to spot the distortions Ms. DeCastro is talking about...

I went ahead and pointed out some of these distortions in in red in case you weren't able to spot them.  


After reading the transcripts, I was startled by Ms. DeCastro's willingness to ramble on, almost unprovoked.  I've learned over the years that no matter what the situation, if you give someone that's got something to hide enough rope, they're eventually going to hang themselves and in this instance Ms DeCastro didn't disappoint. Take a really good look at that closeout sheet from December 23, 2010 again and see if you see anything strange, for the astute among you it should be clear as day.  We'll discuss tomorrow...