Just what does it take to get someone arrested in this town?

While I'm waiting on documents for the Airways Auto Tag agency story, I stumbled upon the investigation report for the Commissioner Marc Sarnoff attack on Coconut Grove gadfly Reid Welch.  From the looks of the report and eyewitness testimony, it looks like Mr Welch was telling the truth, City of Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff did attack Mr. Welch, punched him and wrestled him to the ground.  Here are a few excerpts of eyewitness statements from the report...

Ok, first let's look at what Mr. Maruri told the police...

In no uncertain terms Mr. Maruri witnessed Commissioner Sarnoff run from his house, punch Mr. Welch then wrestle him to the ground.  Now, Mr. Maruri is a unbiased third party with no ties to either Sarnoff or Welch so theoretically he's got no reason to lie about what he saw.  Now, onto another unbiased witness...

Once again, in no uncertain terms this witness says that Sarnoff hauled ass from his home, ran over to Welch, punched him in the back of the head and mounted him.  Wait WTF?

Ok, now that we have two unbiased witnesses that clearly state that Sarnoff attacked Welch, punched him on the back of the head then mounted him, what's the third witness say?  Let's look...

Convenient as this third witness, Sue McConnell, has a long standing relationship with Mr Sarnoff, even the cops don't buy her bullshit, in their report they state clearly "...conveniently she could not recall how they ended up on the ground."


Now, understand, I have no sympathy for Mr Welch, but if it was anyone else doing the attacking other than Sarnoff, surely they would have been arrested.  Here we have two witnesses who clearly witnessed Mr. Sarnoff running at Welch, sucker punching him, mounting him from the rear and keeping him on the ground while holding his legs (insert laugh here) yet no arrest.  This is a clear cut case of assault and like I said, I can't even blame Commissioner Sarnoff for attacking Welch but still, Sarnoff should have been arrested for assault no matter how justified he was in attacking Welch.  But like our friend Al Crespo is so fond of saying, "It's Miami Bitches!"

Stay tuned...

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I've actually hired an attorney to retrieve some documents pertaining to the Airways Auto Tag Agency case that aren't available to the public.  I'm supposed to get these documents at some point today so I'll probably end up posting them on Monday.  Trust me, if they're going to say what I think they're going to say then this entire case is going to be turned on it's ear.  Stay tuned...

Motive...

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If indeed the three tellers in the Airways Auto Tag agency mess were framed and used as scapegoats, why would someone do such a thing?  Remember, this is a purely hypothetical situation, like we've said before, the only things we know for sure about this story is that there were tens of thousands of dollars missing from the tag agency and that after about an hour long investigation, three tellers from the tag agency were arrested and charged with theft.  So what would be the motive for framing these girls if they didn't steal the money?  Let's begin by checking the definition of "motive"...

mo·tive

   [moh-tiv]  Show IPA noun, adjective, verb,-tived, -tiv·ing.

noun

1.

something that causes a person to act in a certain way, doa certain thing, etc.; incentive.

2.

the goal or object of a person's actions: Her motive wasrevenge.

Ok, so what would be the motive behind framing the tag agency tellers if they really didn't steal the money?  The most obvious answer would be to cover up someone else's wrong doing and to deflect the attention away from the real culprit.  Throughout this story, we've mentioned time and time again how improbable it would be for this much money to go missing from such a small operation, especially in an agency with such tight controls and managerial oversight.  Regardless, once again it's the tag agency owner's own statements that are the most damning, here's another excerpt of her testimony during an unemployment hearing for one of the fired employee's...

Wow, that's a pretty shitty situation, all sorts of money missing from your business, government after you to pay them the taxes you collected on their behalf, etc.  You have to sympathize with the owner of this tag agency, especially when all this money was missing in December of all months.  Her assertions of not being able to figure out what was going on seem slightly suspect, after all, didn't we learn yesterday that the owner of the tag agency also owned the company that created the accounting software they used in the tag agency?  She goes on to say...

There you have it, the poor tag agency owner, Ileana Martinez de Castro, at wits end and ready to walk away from the tag agency unable to figure out where tens of thousands of dollars had gone missing.  What a mess, her back against the wall, her little business in jeopardy, etc.  What to do?


Once again, let me remind you that we're not accusing anyone of doing anything, but consider this for a moment, based on what we've just read from the tag agency owner's testimony, doesn't she have the perfect motive for setting up the three tellers to take the fall for the missing money?  Think about that for now, so far we've taken everything the tag agency owner has told us as the truth, at this point we have no reason to not believe her, especially since she's the wife of the City of South Miami's Police Chief, right?  Right?

It's all about the access codes...

That's the truth.  The entire basis for the arrests of the three Airways Auto Tag agency tellers was strictly based on the access codes that according to the police report and the agency owners testimony were only known to the tellers and no one else.  Simple, let's think of these codes as an electronic fingerprint that's unique to the user, if their codes were used during the commission of the crime, it only stands to reason that they were the ones that stole the money, that is if you buy the premise of the tellers being the only ones that have access to their codes.

I've managed to spend about twenty minutes really researching this case (that's forty minutes or so less than Detective Baluja of the MDPD spent) and what I've found is rather alarming.  Yesterday we talked about probable cause and how if you followed the detective's theory of the case, there was no one else other than the teller that could have been responsible for the theft.  I've found transcripts of an unemployment compensation appeal hearing where the owner of the tag agency vehemently defends her firing of the tellers and at the same time manages to destroy the states case against the very tellers she's accused of robbing her.

The first bit of questionable testimony by the owner of the tag agency, Ileana Martinez de Castro, starts when she's asked about how she found out about the timing of the voided transactions that according to the police resulted in the money going missing...

Wait, wtf?  How often have you been able to speak to the guy who wrote the programs that you use on your computer?  We'll talk about that in more detail in a minute but what we should take away from this statement is that the owner of the tag agency has access to the internal workings of the tag agency's bookkeeping software, that puts a serious dent in the states allegation that only the tellers knew there access codes for this system.

Now, here is where the states case goes right out the window...

So there you have it, when the tellers first chose their access codes, it was the tag agency owner who entered those confidential codes into the agency's internal accounting system!  So now, instead of just the three tellers knowing their confidential access codes, we have at least two other people that know these codes, the programmer that created the accounting software and the owner of the tag agency!  So much for the basis of the arrests as now there are at least two other people that could have skimmed the money from the tag agency.

Now, this whole case is pretty fucked isn't it?  I did a little more digging regarding this "accounting software" that the tag agency uses.  It turns out that Airways Auto Tag isn't the only tag agency that uses this software, from what I've heard there are a few other local tag agency's that use the same software that's created by a company called Nitrosoft Corp.  Remember at the beginning of this post we mentioned how unusual it was for the owner of the tag agency to be able to talk to the person that wrote software, while we couldn't find anything about Nitrosoft online, we did manage to get some valuable information regarding the company from Sunbiz, you'd never believe who owns the company that wrote this accounting software, the same accounting software that the police and the tag agency owners claim clearly implicates the three tellers that were arrested...

Would you look at that?  The company's registered agent and VP is none other than the owner of Airways Auto Tag agency, Ileana Martinez de Castro!  SWEET!  No wonder she's able to talk to whoever wrote the software, she's in business with them!

Remember, we're not accusing anyone of anything here, all we've done is simply point out that the owner of the tag agency and subsequently the detective's assertion that the tellers must be responsible for the missing money because their software access codes that were used were only known to them is total bullshit as we've established that there are at least two other people who knew these codes other than the tellers.  I can't believe that the tellers would have been arrested if the investigating detective would have known that they weren't the only ones with access to these confidential access codes, that is unless the detective didn't give a shit because he was there to do the Chief of the City of South Miami a favor and help his wife out and could have cared less about the truth.  It wouldn't be a first for detective Baluja...

Probable cause, what is it?

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We've all heard the term before, but what does it mean?  I'm no lawyer not to I pretend to be, so let's take a look at the definition of probable cause as it appears in the online Legal Dictionary...

Apparent facts discovered through logical inquiry that would lead a reasonably intelligent and prudent person to believe that an accused person has committed a crime, thereby warranting his or her prosecution, or that a Cause of Action has accrued, justifying a civil lawsuit.

Simple enough, right?  The definition goes on to say...

In the criminal arena probable cause is important in two respects. First, police must possess probable cause before they may search a person or a person's property, and they must possess it before they may arrest a person. Second, in most criminal cases the court must find that probable cause exists to believe that the defendant committed the crime before the defendant may be prosecuted.

It all makes perfect sense.  As long as the police believe there's probable cause, they can go ahead and arrest you.  Now, let's look at how this probable cause business relates to the Airways Auto Tag Agency story.  Before we move forward, let's take a quick glance at the arrest report...

According to the arrest report, the "smoking gun" in this case was the allegation that the three tellers that were arrested would...

"log on to the tag agency receipt system using their access codes and on forty four occasions voided the sixty six transactions in order to remove the money & short the proceeds being turned into DHSMV on that day."  

Besides being full of errors and misstatements, that excerpt has one key piece of information that in the detectives mind created more than enough probable cause for him to arrest the tellers.  After an hour long investigation, the detective responsible for this mess, Jorge Baluja, concluded that since the transactions in question were voided using the tellers passwords on the agency's internal bookkeeping software then it must have been the tellers that stole the proceeds of these transactions.


Now imagine that you're the investigating cop here for a moment and step back to get a better look at the overall picture.  Once again, let's take a look at the incontrovertible facts;

1. Tens of thousands of dollars are missing from the tag agency.
2. Transactions were voided using access codes assigned to three of the tellers that were employed there.

Ok, all good.  Now, before I went off half cocked and arrested the tellers, I'd have to figure out who else knew about these teller access codes, specifically I'd want to know the following:

1. How did the tellers get these access codes?  Were they assigned to them or did they pick them out themselves?
2. Once they had these codes, how did they register them in the tag agency's internal bookkeeping system?
3. Who else had access to the bookkeeping system?

If the codes were chosen by the tellers themselves and no one else had access to them, then I'd say they're fucked and an arrest would be justified.  In this case though, it's not that easy.  Let's not forget that the accounting system we're talking about isn't a secure state or government system but is instead the internal bookkeeping system that the tag agency installed themselves making it hardly secure.  Because of the nature of the system, I'd have to guess that the system administrator and/or the bookkeeper/accountant had access to these pass codes as well as the individual tellers.  If that's the case the basis for the tellers arrest goes right out the window since there could be up to at least two other people that had access to these codes other than the tellers.  Problem though is that you won't get answers to any of these types of questions when you spend less than an hour investigating.  For a better understanding of what really went on during this investigation, we have to take another look at that definition of probable cause...

Apparent facts discovered through logical inquiry that would lead a reasonably intelligent and prudent person

LOL!  Are we forgetting that we're talking about Detective Jorge Baluja here the very antithesis of a reasonably intelligent and prudent person!  We also can't ignore the fact that the owner of the tag agency is the wife of a fellow law enforcement officer, specifically the Chief of Police of the City of South Miami therefore making it impossible for the investigating officers to have an unbiased view of what went on.  


Now, don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible that the people arrested were the ones that stole the money, I highly doubt it though.  While I'm not going to accuse anyone else of these crimes, tomorrow we're going to reveal the results of a brief investigation of the facts that were ignored by the arresting officer that will not only provide more than enough probable cause but also motive for someone else other than the three tellers to have stolen the money.

I need a favor...

Can you help me out?  I own a tag agency and I'm missing a ton of money, the state's after my ass and I owe them a boatload worth of taxes and fees, can anyone help me out?  If the tag agency owner is one of us, just a plain old citizen, good luck, not a chance.  But what if the person that owns the tag agency that in question is hooked up?  Perhaps even hooked up with law enforcement?  If indeed the owner of the tag agency is hooked up and there's an investigation by the police, who do you think the police would side with?  The owner of the tag agency or their employees?  I think the answer to that question is fairly obvious.


Those of you who've been following our blog over the last few weeks are now all too familiar with the Airways Tag Agency story, basically in a nutshell, the police alleged that three tellers working at the agency were skimming tens of thousands of dollars from the operation.  The owner claimed to have found out about the skim when there were constant shortages both in the cash taken in and the tags going out.  Although the investigating cop's theory of the case makes no sense whatsoever, at the end of the day one thing is certain, there is a lot of money missing that's unaccounted for, whether or not the tellers that were arrested is another story.


So you have to wonder what the owner of this particular tag agency must have been going through, tens of thousands of dollars missing, shortages with the state, department of revenue hot on your trail demanding the money that you owe them, etc.  What to do?  The logical explanation is to call the cops, in this instance do you think the owner of the tag agency called 911 or perhaps they got the detectives to take a look at the situation from a different angle?  To fully understand the dynamics of how this went down, we first have to see who actually owns this tag agency.  Let's go to Sunbiz and see what we can find under Airways Auto Tag Agency...

There we go, based on what we see here, the registered agent for this company is Ileana Martinez De Castro.  Doesn't ring any bells for me, but a quick Google search reveals that there's another Martinez De Castro around town, a fella that dresses like this...

Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro

That guy is the City of South Miami's police chief, Orlando Martinez de Castro who according to property records just happens to live in the same home as the owner of Airways Tag Agency!  Convenient to say the least!  Now, with that in mind, who do you think called the cops when they found money missing from their tag agency?  Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that the Chief called his friends over at the MDPD to look in to the matter?  Any doubt that the investigating officers showed a bit of bias towards the owners of the tag agency versus the poor tellers that were arrested?

This borders on the obscene.  The facts of the case, at least in my opinion, don't implicate the tellers that were charged, there was a totally bullshit hour long investigation that resulted in tellers getting arrested and the owner of the business just happens to be married to the police chief of a neighboring town.  Justice?  My ass.

Another page from Detective Baluja's book of bullshit...

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After a brief look at the Airways Auto Tag Agency debacle, nothing seems to make any sense.  Detective Jorge Baluja of the MDPD comes in and interviews the tellers from the auto tag agency regarding monies that were missing from the agency's tightly controlled accounting system and in less than one hour he concludes that it was the tellers that stole tens of thousands of dollars from the agency and the state and no one else, not the management or the tag agency's owners that were constantly watching the tellers every move or even the people within the tag agency who controlled the accounting aspects of the business.  After a brief harsh interrogation of the three young female tellers, through Detective Baluja's somewhat compromised detective reasoning skills, he decides that indeed the tellers were the culprits, regardless of the fact that no one with an once of common sense could come to the same conclusion, then goes ahead and arrests everyone.

So there you have it, the case of tens of thousands of dollars missing from the tag agency has been solved, most expeditiously I might add.  Convenient, isn't it?  I'm sure the state was after the folks over at the tag agency to make up for or explain away the missing money, out of nowhere a random detective appears who solves the caper within an hour and poof just like that it's over regardless of how improbable his findings were, regardless of the fact that the evidence clearly makes it impossible for the people he accused to have stole the money.  Nice.

Now let's ask ourselves, is Detective Baluja some kind of idiot savant that has a gift of being able to solve crimes that no one else has or is he just some sort of idiot that's been able to get away with charging innocent people then walking away leaving someone else to deal with the mess he's created?  Or maybe Detective Baluja is a just a crooked cop who's become adept at coercing witnesses and fabricating evidence to suit whatever his objectives may be?  Let's revisit the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case for a moment, a perfect example of how Detective Baluja works is the instance of the cashiers check he used to implicate the attorney involved in the case in some sort of wrong doing, for those of you who don't recall, Baluja showed the attorney's receptionist a copy of the cashiers check from that transaction as it was issued from the issuing bank and asks her if she'd ever seen it before since part of her job description was to receive and process these types of checks for the law office.  Here's a copy of the cashiers check he showed her...

When the receptionist is shown this check during her deposition, she goes on to say that she had never seen the check and that if she had seen it the check would have had her handwriting on it with the file number etc and that since it didn't have her handwriting on it she had never seen the check before.  Little did the receptionist know that Detective Baluja was holding another copy of the same check, a copy obtained from the bank it had been deposited in...

This copy of the check clearly has the receptionists handwriting on it, once she was shown the check at deposition nearly a year after the arrests, she went on to say...

Now, this change in testimony completely destroys the very foundation of the states case against the attorney they arrested.  The question we're left to ask though is despite the fact that Detective Baluja had both copies of this check in his possession, why did he chose to show the witness the clean copy as it appeared from the issuing bank rather than the one from the bank the check was deposited that clearly had the witnesses handwriting on it?  The answer is simple, he was told to put together a case on the anniversary of the mortgage fraud task force's first arrests and he simply chose to manipulate the evidence to create an outcome that was in line with what he wanted, once again, facts and evidence be damned.

So what's this history of fucking things up have to do with the Tag Agency story?  Simple, I don't think the fact that Detective Baluja ended up on this case was any kind of accident, no way no how.  If you believe that bullshit, you might as well believe that cavemen invented fire cause they were tired of eating raw marshmallows.

You guys decide, was the assignment of this case to our favorite detective a random assignment or was he intentionally assigned to the case in order to reach a predetermined conclusion thereby framing three innocent people in order to deflect attention from the real culprits?  The answer to that question lies with the people who own the tag agency, we'll unravel that mystery tomorrow...