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...
Plantation attorney acquitted in federal mortgage fraud case
By TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA
A Plantation attorney was acquitted of 13 counts of bank fraud Thursday, after a federal jury found that she did not knowingly participate in a mortgage loan scam that cost three banks $7.9 million.Eve Rosen, 55, was implicated in a scheme in which Broward County developer Jeffrey Phillips recruited South Florida straw buyers to create fraudulent loan applications in order to buy vacant lots in North Florida. Between 2006 and 2008, Rosen was the closing agent on all of the transactions, which featured artificially inflated prices, fake income statements and falsified down payment information. In addition to the 13 counts of bank fraud, Rosen was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
The case was part of Operation Stolen Dreams, the federal government’s largest-ever mortgage fraud takedown effort. Others involved in the case, including Phillips, the straw buyers and those who recruited them to falsify their information, have pleaded guilty in the scheme.
Rosen’s lawyers said their client did not know about the scam that Phillips was perpetrating and was duped just like the banks were.
“She’s been a practicing attorney for 25 years, with no [problems] in the past,” said Russell Koonin, of the Ferraro Law Firm. “There was not one witness on the stand who could point to say that she knew” about the scheme.
In a federal courtroom in Miami, prosecutors argued that Rosen was “deliberately ignorant,” and that she played a part in preparing falsified closing documents.
A jury returned a not guilty verdict Thursday, ending the 10-month long case.
I guess congratulations are in order for Ms. Rosen and her defense team. I have to admit, this case flew under my radar as I had no knowledge of it or the fed's "Operation Stolen Dreams". Regardless, let's take a look at the federal indictment...
The charges seem to be in line with all the other federal mortgage fraud indictments, wire fraud, bank fraud etc, the only major difference between this case and the others is that this one appears to have involved unimproved vacant lots rather than homes. I really don't know enough about this case to comment at this point, you have to wonder though, how strong could the governments case been against Ms. Rosen if her codefendants all plead guilty and they still couldn't get a conviction against her?
On another note, I'm told that the defense is about to rest in the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case. According to several of our sources, earlier this week one of the jurors told the judge that she was convinced that the cops charged were innocent and nothing that she was going to hear going forward was going to convince her otherwise! Assuming the government didn't get this juror thrown out, isn't a not guilty verdict a foregone conclusion at this point?
Considering the expected outcome of the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud trail, I'm left to wonder, who's going to put the defendants lives back together? Who's going to erase the last years worth of economic hardship? Who's going to restore their reputations within the community? If indeed the jury acquits the men charged in this case, was this case really as solid as the government made it out to be? I guess we're going to have to wait till next week to find out.
In case you're not familiar with our coverage of the City of Miami CFO Larry Spring's foreclosure and possible mortgage fraud misadventures, here's a quick run down...
So there you have it, from what we've been able to glean from the public records regarding Mr. Spring's dealings involving the home located at 14421 Polk Street it looks like we've put together more than enough evidence to warrant a closer look by the state attorneys office, especially when you take into account his position within the City of Miami. Don't hold your breath...
It looks like the Miami Herald finally got around to reporting on City of Miami Assistant Fire Chief Veldora Arthur's federal mortgage fraud indictment. From the Herald article...
The indictment says Arthur received a payoff yet had no intention of living on the properties, which eventually went into foreclosure.
Ok, textbook definition of a "Straw Buyer".
Arthur’s attorneys dispute the charges, saying their client actually went to the feds not long after the 2006 purchases took place, and after a friend noticed the paperwork said she was making $123,000 a month, not a year. Bieber called his client “a victim” who “unfortunately associated herself with people who were committing fraud.”
Victim? Really? She had no idea what was going on?
Bieber said that even though Arthur was able to purchase the properties with no money down — a move he said was fairly common during the boom years of the real estate market — she received a payment after the properties closed.
Hold up, her attorney is admitting that she received payment once the properties closed? That in of itself isn't proof that somethings wrong? Isn't the seller supposed to get paid once the property sells rather than the buyer?
Bieber said Arthur was introduced to Fagan through a friend, and was simply looking to make an investment. The plan was to flip the properties for a profit, but, Bieber said, there was no profit because the properties went into foreclosure. “She believed this was an honest investment during the real estate boom,” said Bieber.
Wait a minute, the attorney is now claiming that Ms Arthur was "was simply looking to make an investment", just a few moments ago he clearly stated that his client was able "to purchase the properties with no money down" and "received a payment after the properties closed". Once again, isn't this the textbook definition of a "Straw Buyer"?
After examining the indictment a little closer, we've found that all the homes that were used in this mortgage fraud scheme were in the same building located at 3370 NE 190th street in Aventura.
From the looks of it, the people who orchestrated this scheme found a sweet spot in this condo, units that would appraise high but for one reason or another were having trouble selling on the legitimate real estate market, no different than the sweet spot thatJohn Romney and crew found in the West Grovewhere they were able to bust out several homesraking in millions of dollars in profits.
Now, let's take apart this mess and see what we can find. We'll begin with the deeds for the two condos that Veldora purchased, first unit 3111...
From the documentary stamps we figure the purchase price of this property to be $1,950,000. That's seems like a ton of money for a 2,720 sqft condo! Regardless, let's take a look at the warranty deed for unit 3711 in the same building...
Unit 3711 purchased on February 7, 2007 for $2,000,000 financed by two mortgages totaling $1,657,500
Unit 3111 purchased on March 6, 2006 for $1,950,000 financed by two mortgages totaling $1,811,550.
Based on the purchases prices we were able to deduce that means there was a shortage of $480,950 between the two transactions, Ms. Arthur's attorney stated that she put no money down, so who did then? To further complicate matters, Ms. Arthur turns around a refinances unit 3711 just five months later for a cool $1,680,000...
Can you imagine the kind of money the mortgage brokers and title companies must have made off of these transactions?! We're talking over FIVE MILLION DOLLARS worth of loans not to mention the recording and closing costs! Yet even after signing what looks like hundreds of pages of documents for these purchases and the subsequent mortgages Ms. Arthur's attorney still claims that...
“She believed this was an honest investment during the real estate boom,”
Let's give her the benefit of the doubt, after all our justice system is based on a presumption of innocence for those who've been charged with a crime.I'm baffled at the thought that Ms. Arthur, someone whose job at the fire department calls for managing payrolls and procurements, someone that is supposed to have a modicum of financial sense could have thought that this was a good or even honest investment? The mortgage payments alone for these two properties must have been in the tens of thousands, after all she was borrowing nearly four million dollars at 7 to 8% interest!! That hardly sound like something someone that has any financial sense would agree to especially when interest rates were as low as they were during the peak of the housing bubble. Let's not forget qualifying for the mortgages themselves, how the hell did a City of Miami firefighter making $180k per year qualify for four different mortgages for close to four million with within one month of each other?
Something is definitely haywire with the statements that Ms. Arthur's attorneys made to the media today but like I said, she's innocent till proven guilty and should be treated as such. Let's assume that she had no part in falsifying the documents used to obtain these mortgages, let's even assume that she wasn't really a straw buyer and didn't even get cash back after these transactions closed. Let's say all of those defenses are legitimate, there is one aspect of these transactions that she's not going to be able to explain away though, has anyone figured it out?
We'll discuss tomorrow, in the mean time think about this question, what do Veldora Arthur, Commissioner Marc Sarnoff and the Plantation cops that were indicted for mortgage fraud all have in common?
Consider for a moment who Ms. Arthur is within the City of Miami Fire Department, oddly enough her responsibility is to oversee the financial matters of the Fire Department including payroll and procurement. Who exactly do we have behind the controls at the City of Miami? Ms. Arthur makes $184,336.44 as an assistant fire chief, in this day and age, is that not enough to get by on?
What's even more disturbing is the fact that she was arrested ten days ago on an indictment from late 2010, yet we haven't even heard a peep out of the local media. What happened to the perp walk or the press release? Ms. Arthur and crew were charged with a nearly $11,000,000 mortgage fraud scam and the media is mute? What gives here folks?
Ms. Arthur is out on $125,000 bond, we'll have a full break down of the indictment coming on Wednesday, stay tuned.
That's right folks, the mortgage fraudster who was arrested for beating the crap out of his wife then smothered her with a pillow the day he got out of jail on his mortgage fraud charges was charged for another case of domestic violence WHILE HE WAS IN JAIL! That's right, while the subject of this weeks blog posts was sitting in jail waiting to make bail for his mortgage fraud misadventures, he was actually charged and arraigned for another instance of beating his wife! From the police report...
In case you can't read the text, here it is...
The victim and defendant are married. The victim states that she walked outside their home to ask the defendant for the car keys. The defendant replied no, at which time the victim walked back inside the home and threw a bike on the floor. The defendant went inside and began slapping the victim in her face. On 10-06-08 a routine computer check revealed that the defendant was incarcerated at Dade County Jail on an unrelated charge (see case # PD081003473153). Defendant charged with the above listed offense.
WTF? Getting charged for domestic violence while you're already sitting in jail for another crime? I don't get it, the guys wife had to know he was sitting in jail, so why would she go ahead and file this report? Regardless of her motivation, as I mentioned yesterday, the state of Florida has some very strict procedures for dealing with cases of domestic violence and the court doesn't play around when it comes to dealing with men who beat on women.
Let's recap the time line of events as we've described them over the last few days as they pertain to the domestic violence and mortgage fraud charges...
October 3, 2008 - Subject is charged with Grand Theft, Organized Scheme to Defraud and Identity theft during the commission of a mortgage fraud and is taken into custody.
October 6, 2008 - Subjects wife files a domestic violence complaint, subject is charged and arraigned for Battery while he's in jail waiting to bond out on the other charges stemming from the mortgage fraud. Somehow he's given a bond while he's in jail (100K I think).
October 10, 2008 - Subject is released on bond for the charges associated with the mortgage fraud case ($450k bond) and I suppose on the $100k bond from the domestic violence case that he was charged with while in custody.
October 15, 2008 - Subject is charged once again for domestic violence, arrested and taken back into custody.
October 17, 2008 - Subject posts bond once again and is released from jail.
I don't understand this could have possibly happened. Just so we're clear, the guy was in jail for a massive mortgage fraud case awaiting bond, while he's incarcerated, he gets charged for domestic violence, then he gets out of jail and while he's out on two different bonds for two different serious cases he gets arrested again for domestic violence, spends a couple of days in jail then bonds out?! Let's give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say that the wife who was filing these domestic violence complaints was a wacko and had no credibility, wouldn't the simple fact that the guy committed another crime while he's out on bail have been enough to revoke his bond on one or both of the previous cases? Even worse, wouldn't you think that the previous bonds would be revoked and the guy would have to sit in jail till he went to trial? Common sense would dictate as much, wouldn't it? Isn't the guy who's out on bail worst nightmare to get rearrested again while on bail? How wasn't this guys bail on the other two cases revoked when he was arrested for the third time?
Something is rotten here folks, it's starting to seem to me that there was an outside influence involved with keeping this guy out of jail, perhaps someone on the state's side that had an interest in keeping this guy as clean as possible and to make his stay within the criminal justice system as painless as possible. Has anyone connected the dots yet? If not, things will begin to make sense real soon.
Bear with me folks, I know the domestic violence angle may not make sense to you in the context of the mortgage fraud stories we've been discussing but I promise it will all make sense by the end of the week.
Yesterday we left off discussing a domestic violence case that a notorious mortgage fraudster was involved in, today we found the case file and copied it. Here's the details of what happened according to the police report...
In case you can't read the excerpt from the report, here's the text...
Victim and defendant who lived together for four years were involved in a verbal altercation which escalated into a physical altercation by the defendant. According to the victim, the defendant began screaming and grabbed her by the arm a started shaking her. He then proceeded to grab her by the hair and slammed her against the wall. Once her head hit the wall the victim ran to the room where she attempted to call the police defendant followed, and he took the phone from her impeding the victim to call police. Defendant then grabbed victim once again and threw her on the couch at which time the victim began screaming and defendant placed a pillow over her face to make her be quiet. The defendant then stated "I am sorry" and she stopped screaming. Victim asked for her phone back and the defendant gave it back to her at which time she called the police. On today's date the defendant was located and arrested.
Oh boy. Slamming her head against the wall then grabbing her, throwing her down and smothering her with a pillow? That sounds like some serious shit, at least to me it sounds like this attack could even be construed as an instance of attempted murder. Regardless the state chose to file the following charges...
Tampering with a victim and simple battery? Not exactly the way I'd interpret what happened but then again I'm not a cop. Regardless of how the state decided to proceed against the wife beater, the allegations seem to be pretty serious and considering how stringent the state of Florida's domestic violence laws are, you would think the state gave the offender a proper punishment for this heinous act. You would think so, but that's hardly what happened...
So you just got busted for mortgage fraud and are being accused of ripping off a bank to the tune of nearly $500,000. Your sorry ass sits in jail for nearly two weeks until your family can get together the money for your $450,000 bond. Your family and friends finally get together the money to get you out of jail and the state agrees to let you out but with the condition of being under house arrest with a monitor (aka lojack) attached to your ankle. Not the best of circumstances but at least you're out on the street after spending 13+ days in jail.
What's the first thing you do when you get home? Beat the shit out of your wife, what else?! Now, the wife beating alone should have been enough to lock your ass up for a few days, but consider that you were just let out of jail on a fcuking $450,000 bond and on house arrest to boot! Wouldn't this instance of domestic violence have been enough to revoke your bond? Not in this case folks, not only was it not enough to get the bond revoked, but the wife beater in question was out on the streets the very next day and had all the charges against him dismissed less than a month later.
Something is rotten about this story, I'm not going to publish names until I get some proof as to what happened. Looks like we're off to the courthouse tomorrow...
It's that easy folks! Yesterday we left off with a troubling deed that we found on the Miami Dade County clerk of courts website that involved a company owned by convicted mortgage fraudster John Romney. We asked our readers to take a good look at the document and see what didn't seem kosher about it. Here's the document again...
The document is simple enough, a simple deed from the seller, Raul Romero, to the buyer, Property Collateral Inc which is owned by John Romney.
Let's start with the most obvious problem with this document, the dates. From the notary section on page two we see that a notary named Aned Perdomo notarized this deed on November 21, 2006, no problem right?
But then a closer look at the top right of the first page reveals that the deed wasn't recorded till nearly four years later!
WTF is that about? Why wouldn't the closing agent record the deed right after the closing?
Moving on, we can also deduce the sales price of the home to Property Collateral through the documentary stamps, in this case based on the clerks stamp it looks like the doc stamps were $4,530.00. In Dade county the doc stamps are calculated at the rate of 60 cents per hundred dollars of the sales price, so in this instance based on the doc stamps the sales price of the home would have been $755,000. So far so good right?
What's troubling is that after another search of the County Recorders Office we can't seem to find a mortgage for Property Collateral's purchase of this property which means that it must have been paid for in cash. Interesting, let's go back to the recorders office website and see if we find anything else regarding this property...
HUH? Check the item high lighted in yellow, it's a lis pendens for this very property! According to this it looks like Deutsche Bank began foreclosure proceedings against this property on November 9, 2009. Let's take a look at that document...
How can you file a lis pendens in 2009 when the deed wasn't recorded till 2010? This must mean that there was a mortgage somewhere between November 21, 2006 when Property Collateral aquired the property and November 4, 2009 when the foreclosure action was initiated. So where's this mortgage? It can't be in Property Collateral's name otherwise we would have seen it when we searched the County Recorders website. What now? Let's take another look at this Lis Pendens, specifically who's being sued...
Perhaps searching the recorders website using one of these other defendants names will provide a clue as to what's going on. Let's give it a shot...
Bingo, now we find another lis pendens for the same property that didn't appear in our previous search, one that was filed a little over a year before the others. Huh?! Let's take a look at the document...
JEEZE! Let's take a look at the defendants...
DAMN! They're suing everyone and their brother! At the very least we can identify Raul Romero as being the guy who sold the property to Property Collateral, but who the hell is "Leonor Essonreid"?
This is where things get really interesting, back to the County Recorders website and a quick search for Leonor Essonreid...
Viola, there you have it. Two mortgages for the same property apparently recorded after Property Collateral aka John Romney purchased the property or so it seems...
The next part gets real good, we'll discuss on Monday.
There have been a number of rumors circulating over the last few months surrounding the circumstances of convicted fraudster John Romney's mortgage fraud case and the arrangements that were afforded to him in exchange for testimony against other people he worked with throughout his criminal career. I have to wonder though, why in the world would any law enforcement agency need to make a deal with someone who's involved in a paperwork intensive crime like Mortgage Fraud? After all, the evidence is all there on paper and recorded with not just the banks that financed the deals but also with the county recorders office among others. To give you an idea of just how easy it is to build one of these cases, let's give ourselves five minutes online and see what we can come up with.
Bingo. Now we've confirmed that Mr. Romney did indeed own a company called Property Collateral Inc. Now consider that any deed, mortgage or quit claim deed that's filed in Miami Dade County has to be filed with the County Recorders Office, so let's go to their website and search to see what Property Collateral has been up to...
We find 23 recorded documents from our search of the County Recorders office, most interesting though is the item highlighted in yellow, a deed that was recorded on 8/3/10. That deed strikes me as strange, what kind of real estate transaction would Mr. Romney be conducting when he knows he's about to go to jail, especially when every move he makes is under close scrutiny by law enforcement? Let's pull up that deed and see what we find...
Uh Oh! Does anyone see the problem in those docs? If you can't, take another look and pay specific attention to the dates. Amazing how we were able to find all this in less than five minutes without a badge or subpoena powers or even a cooperating witness. We'll discuss in detail tomorrow...
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.
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.
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.
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...
I read a story in the Miami Herald on October 7, 2008 regarding a mortgage fraud case that didn't make any sense to me, I did a little digging and what I found left me stunned. A tale of a task force head whose political ambitions have run amuck, a detective without a modicum of common sense, a reporter that prints anything that's put in front of him, the railroading of an attorney by this machine to further the ambitions of its head and the lengths that those involved will go to in order to salvage a case that should have never been. Please take the time to start from the oldest post first and enjoy...
