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...
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