An update on the case of disbarred attorney Sally Sawh...

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Some of you  may remember the story of disbarred attorney Sally Sawh who the Florida Bar accused of misappropriating over two million dollars of her clients money that she held in her law firms trust account, we discussed her story several times over the last few years ( here, here and here ).  The Florida Bar did their own investigation and found that there were several millions of dollars worth of clients funds missing from her firm's trust accounts, there findings can be found here in this report...

Sally Sawh Disbarment Sally Ann de La Casa

Shortly after this report was filed on October 3, 2008, Ms Sawh was arrested and charged with Grand Theft for charges stemming from this report, after three years of delays, her criminal case finally went to trial last week.  To be honest, I had all but forgotten about Ms. Sawh until we received these two comments on previous blog posts last night...

Today this woman was found UNAMOUNSLY INNOCENT by a jury. So all of the above is simply based on someone's wild imagination or a possible stalker.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Sally who?":

UNANAMOUS Jury verdict 100% innocent 12/12/11.She testified so all of this nonsense of her fledding was just that NONSENSE AND MAKE BELIEVE but I guess made good reading.

Take a bow for all looking like fools! And the french fled the US on Friday when their money laundering was made public to the IRS.

Also Growing Leaders is an AUDITED Foundation so also all of that make beleive about the Foundation IS JUST THAT, MAKE BELIEVE! Shame, shame , shame.

Hope Straw Buyer has the courage to now APOLOGIZE for creating a blog on this woman BASED ON PURE FICTION! 

These comments were obviously left by none other than Ms. Sawh from her hotel room at the Hilton in downtown Miami.  While we have to congratulate Ms. Sawh and her attorneys for convincing the jury to find her "not guilty" of grand theft, I'm puzzled about this bit...

She testified so all of this nonsense of her fledding (sic) was just that NONSENSE AND MAKE BELIEVE but I guess made good reading.

I guess the forensic accountants who conducted the investigation for the Florida bar must have been nuts when they concluded that there was over two million dollars that had gone missing from her firms trust accounts?  Since Ms. Sawh actively reads and comments on our blog, perhaps she'd like to tell our readers why in addition to the missing two million dollars that was the subject of her criminal case, the bar audit also found another nearly $800,000 missing from her accounts as well?

I don't know, perhaps it's all fiction.  Maybe those nasty people over at the bar had an axe to grind with Ms. Sawh, maybe she just decided to give up her license to practice law for shits and grins as well, who knows, perhaps Ms. Sawh is innocent after all and all this fuss about money missing was just a big misunderstanding.  

We'll take a closer look and see what we can find...

Sally who?

We left off on Monday discussing disbarred attorney Sally Sawh who the state alleges made off with nearly two million dollars of her clients monies.  From a quick Google search we stumbled upon some YouTube videos of Ms. Sawh mentoring some Dade county school kids, great.  As I mentioned on Monday though, there was something weird about those YouTube videos, come to think of it, I can't even figure out how I found them as they have no reference to anyone named Sally Sawh anywhere on them.  Instead the videos refer to someone named Sallyann Della Casa.  HUH?  I wonder, why the change in name?  Regardless, we now seem to find Sally Sawh AKA Sallyann Della Casa in Trinidad mentoring kids...

Interesting, from what we've been able to find Sally Sawh or Sallyann Della Casa has started an organization in Trinidad called the "Growing Leaders Foundation", from the Trinidad Guardian article...

Della Casa asked, “If this programme can save one child from becoming a criminal down the road, why not give the company a credit for it?”

Great point!  This mentoring program warrants a closer look, more tomorrow.

Where in the world is Sally Sawh?

Anyone?  Any idea what happened to disbarred attorney Sally Sawh who the state alleges stole $2,000,000 of clients money that was deposited in her trust account?  We talked about Sally a little over a year ago, here's a snippet from the Daily Business Review to refresh your memory...

Yikes!  So what's Sally been up to lately?  All we've been able to find are some bizarro YouTube videos...



From the videos description we get the following:

Sally teaching kids during a Kapow session. Sally has been a mentor for Dade County School kids for the last 5 years. She no longer practices law but still continues to inspire kids as she pursues her masters in Urban Planning and her dreams of a diplomatic career.

That's nice isn't it?  The law thing didn't really work out, so instead she's taken the time to mentor Dade County School kids, that's fantastic.  

There's a problem though, something seemed bizarre about that video, I watched and re-watched it till I figured it out.  Anyone else pick up on it?   More tomorrow...

MDPD saves the environment and some trust fund shenanigans.

We're not talking about trust fund monkey business like disbarred attorneys Roger Besu or Sally Sawh allegedly ripping off their clients of millions of dollars, we're talking about our own MDPD misappropriating (what stealing is called when the government does it) money from a federally funded trust fund!  YUP!  Uncle same sets aside millions of dollars in a trust fund for the MDPD to go after people breaking federal and state environmental laws, FANTASTIC!  But how does that money get spent?  Jim DeFede does a great job of breaking down how some of that money was spent, let's take a look...


Hybrid SUV's for the MDPD top brass  $300,000...

They're now reporting they actually spent $900,000 on those SUV's, so maybe they looked like this...

Camper $8,000.  Wait a minute, what kind of camper does $8,000 buy?!

Travel expenses $180,000...

DirecTV subscriptions $10,000...

30 Smith and Wesson assault rifles $20,000...

High powered rifle scopes $15,000...

 

Good lord!  What the hell does any of that stuff have to do with investigating people breaking environmental laws?  I'm not sure, I can only imagine the justification for these purchases that the taxpayers are going to be offered by the MDPD.  Regardless though, according to Mr. DeFede's article, all purchases must be authorized by both a local EPA representative and the director of the MDPD, based on Mr. DeFede's examination of the documents authorizing these purchases, he suggests that someone else signed off on those purchases, someone familiar to our mortgage fraud stories...

In today's follow up column to first story from the CBS I-Team investigation, Mr. DeFede claims that these questionable purchases were authorized by none other than MDPD Chief legal counsel Mr. Glenn Theobald who also happens to be the head of the Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud task force!  Mr. Defede states that Mr. Theobald approved those purchases back in February 2008 allowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to be diverted from this federal environmental fund to other parts of the MDPD.  YIKES!  Apparently Mr. DeFede's inquiry into this matter prompted Mr. Theobald to issue a memorandum stating the following on January 29, 2010...

"This memorandum rescinds the previous opinion regarding your memo to this writer...trust fund monies in the account can only be used to further environmental investigations...A direct nexus with the expenditure and the furtherance of environmental investigations is required...Any other interpretation was mistaken due to the information provided at the time the memorandum was presented."

That certainly sounds like a CYA move if I've ever seen one!  As our readers know, we hold Mr. Theobald in high regard, so hopefully there's a good explanation for what went on here.  Nice work Mr. DeFede, we're waiting with bated breath...

OH SALLY! OMG! WTF?!

So here I am scouring the internet for something to write about and BAM I come across this mess! This is the story of Miami Beach attorney Sally Sawh who allegedly stole TWO MILLION DOLLARS FROM HER CLIENTS! NO $HIT! Let's take a look:

DAMN! Sally Sawh something alright, she SAWH herself spending her clients money to the tune of TWO MILLION DOLLARS! Let's see what her attorney says (click on photo to enlarge)...

No $hit huh? To your "dismay" the state attorney's office concluded that certain transactions violated Florida law?! That's precious! TWO MILLION DOLLARS MISSING AND THEY'RE DISMAYED?! I certainly got a kick out of Ms. Sawh's defense attorney's comments, that's damn funny.

What struck me as odd though was where the article states that Ms. Sawh was released on $10,000 bail. I mean, she allegedly steals TWO MILLION FCUKING DOLLARS and she gets out on $10,000 bail? Our man Roger Besu was hit with a $5 million dollar bail, I wonder what made Sally any different? Both were attorneys who were disbarred when they were arrested for equally egregious bar complaints, so what was it that let her get away with only a $10,000 bail? Strange stuff people!

Anyone remember the arrests in the Barrera Mortgage fraud case? We've already discussed at length how the bail amounts for the defendants were exorbitantly high (here, here and here), John Romney and Michael Martinez got nearly half a million dollars bail and the attorney Delaila Estefano, got $75,000 bail. Keep in mind that the attorney was a practicing attorney at the time of the arrest, not like Mr. Besu or Ms. Sawh we were both suspended from practicing at the time of their arrests. So the question begs to be asked, why were the bail amounts so high? Ms. Sawh allegedly made away with $2 million and she walked out of jail on $10,000 bail, just how much money did the attorney in the Barrera case steal? Answers anyone? Detective Baluja? Assistant State Attorney Kostrzewski? Anyone?

Looks like I'll be making another trip down to the courthouse tomorrow to find the answer...