Censorship.

You gotta admit, there's a lot of people out there that don't like what I write about, can you blame them?  Whether it's a crime that they've committed and prosecuted for or worse, a crime that they've committed that they haven't been prosecuted for that we've uncovered.  Most recently, it seems that the powers that be over at the Airways Auto Tag Agency and some folks down at the City of South Miami PD command staff aren't too happy about what we've been discussing.  The folks over at the tag agency were so upset about what we had found out regarding the allegations of the three tellers steeling money from the agency that they even went so far as to try to get the tellers who were arrested bonds revoked.  In case you missed it, here's the part of the motion that specifically mentions our blog...

That didn't work out as planned for the tag agency owners as the state ended up withdrawing their motion.


Shortly after we discovered that the tag agency was owned by the City of South Miami's Chief of Police wife, we started to notice quite a bit more activity on the blog from the City of South Miami.  We got even more activity when we found that the City of South Miami was sending work over to the Chief's wife's tag agency.  I was curious to see where this traffic was coming from, I checked our tracking software and found that there were City of South Miami police discussing our blog and what we were talking about over at the LEOaffairs forum, which is a forum/bulletin board where cops go to talk...

Things started to get really heated over there regarding the Chief and his wife's tag agency, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to get any screen shots of what was going on, a few days later I went over and looked again and POOF, everything was gone!  Anything and everything that was in any way shape of form disparaging towards the chief or his family had vanished!  When the forum's moderator was asked to explain what had happened, he offered this explanation...

Due to an issue beyond our control, most of the posts on this board were deleted. There is no way for them to be recovered. I apologize for this error and will work to make sure that this does not happen again. Please feel free to post in accordance with the Terms of Use. 
Again, I apologize for the inconvenience. 

No, kidding?  Some issue beyond our control caused the negative posts from fellow officers to get deleted?  Don't you hate when that happens?  Someone then makes a new post about the censorship regarding posts critical of the Chief...

They even got to this message board, huh? 

LOL!  Oh, well.  I figured that was that till the other day when I noticed that we were getting hits from the LEOaffairs website again, lo and behold, someone started a thread linking to our blog and our discussions regarding the Chief, the third comment from user name "Spartacus" tells it all...

I guess this post will be "Deleted Accidentally" in ... 3 ... 2 ... 

That's funny as hell.  The take away here is that no matter how hard you try to contain these kinds of stories, now matter how hard you try to suppress the truth, it always has a weird way of working its way to the surface.  In my opinion this type of censorship is the lowest form damage control by the Chief, his family and his supporters.  The very constitution that the Chief and his officers swore to uphold guarantees the right to free speech, as the judge who heard the motion to revoke bond most eloquently put it to the prosecutor who asked for some sort of restraints to be put on our blog...

"Have you ever heard of something called the first amendment?"

Whatever!!  To our newest readers from the City of South Miami, welcome and don't fear, there's no censorship over here, after all, this place isn't run by this guy...

The real victims of the West Grove mortgage fraud scams...

Seems like it was just yesterday that we uncovered millions of dollars worth of mortgage fraud scams in the West Grove section of Coconut Grove.  The truth is that was nearly four years ago, yesterday I accidentally found myself driving through that very same area again so I decided to pass by some of the homes that I had written about back then to see what they looked like today.  I figured by now, several years later, that the homes would have gone through the foreclosure process and would have been purchased by new buyers who would have rehabbed them and resold them, I was shocked at what I saw.  Let's start with 3379 Oak Avenue, the home that sold for $616.00/sqft back in December of 2008, here is what it looked like during the summer of 2009...

How does this humble little home look like today?  Here we go...

How do you like that?  The home is condemned, garbage all over the place, landscaping overgrown, etc.  Now lets take a look right next door at 3375 Oak Avenue, this home sold for $425/sqft back in September 2008, here's how it looked back then...

And here it is today...

Once again, in state of disrepair, condemned, garbage all over the place, etc.


Last but not least, lets take a look at 3390 Oak Avenue, the home that was at the center of the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case, a home that sold for over $600,000 back in February 2008.  This is what it looked like in July of 2009 when we first wrote about it...

And here it is four years after the fraudulent sale...

Still in a state of disrepair, condemned, etc, etc.  So who are the real victims of these frauds?  Certainly not the banks that lent the money to the straw buyers and the recruiters who put these deals together, the real victims here are the poor neighborhoods where these homes are located.  Here we are over four years since the frauds occurred and these homes are still sitting there empty, bringing down the neighborhood, screwing up home values and giving undesirables a place to hang out and do their nefarious deeds.  The other thing to consider is that these frauds displaced the multi-generational West Grove families of Bahamian descent, families that did not benefit at all from these inflated sales prices, families that were part of the original Coconut Grove fabric, who knows where they've ended up now.


Now here's an even worse thought.  Could there be some sort of conspiracy occurring over hear in West Grove?  Could there be some reason why these homes have been allowed to sit dormant like this all these years?  The first consequence of these "zombies" littering this neighborhood is decreased property values throughout the West Grove, this plays perfectly into the plans of speculators who are looking to gentrify the neighborhood.  Think about it, they can sweep up the remaining properties for a song and dance then go ahead and start rebuilding the neighborhood when they own the majority of the homes therefore scoring a massive windfall and also running out the last of the original West Grove residents.  Sounds evil, doesn't it?  Otherwise, how can you explain what's going on?

Whoops! Looks like the city of South Miami's police chief has a problem!

I'm not really sure how we've ended up where we are today.  It seems like we started writing about mortgage fraud years ago, then a few months back we stumbled upon the story of three tellers at a tag agency getting arrested for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the tag agency.  Through a weird chain of events we then found out that the tag agency was owned by the wife of the City of South Miami's police chief and oddly enough we found that despite the fact that the tag agency in question was no where near the City of South Miami, somehow the city still sent this tag agency it's business.  Strange chain of events, huh?

Let's disregard how fucked up the case against the three tellers in the tag agency story is for a moment, as a matter of fact, let's just forget about the whole tag agency story for the time being.  When we exposed the City of South Miami doing business with the police chief's wife's company, there seemed to be an air of impropriety around that business relationship, especially when the city could have gone ahead and done business directly with a county owned tag agency and saved themselves some money or at least done business with a tag agency that's within their own city limits.  It just doesn't seem kosher for the city to be conducting business like this.  It turns out that it's not only not kosher, but it seems to be against the city's own code of ethics!

Let's take a look at the language in the City of South Miami's own code of ethics ordinance Section 8A-1...

(a)

Designation. This section shall be designated and known as the "City of South Miami Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics Ordinance." This section shall be applicable to all city personnel as defined below, and shall also constitute a standard of ethical conduct and behavior for all autonomous personnel, quasi-judicial personnel, advisory personnel and departmental personnel. The provisions of this section shall be applied in a cumulative manner. By way of example, and not as a limitation, subsections (c) and (d) may be applied to the same contract or transaction.

(b)

Definitions. For the purposes of this section the following definitions shall be effective:

(1)

The term "commission members" shall refer to the mayor and the members of the city commission.

(2)

The term "autonomous personnel" shall refer to the members of autonomous authorities, boards and agencies, such as the city community redevelopment agency and the health facilities authority.

(3)

The term "quasi-judicial personnel" shall refer to the members of the planning board, the environmental review and preservation board, the code enforcement board and such other individuals, boards and agencies of the city as perform quasi-judicial functions.

(4)

The term "advisory personnel" shall refer to the members of those city advisory boards and agencies whose sole or primary responsibility is to recommend legislation or give advice to the citycommission.

(5)

The term "departmental personnel" shall refer to the city clerk, the city manager, department heads, the city attorney, and all assistants to the city clerk, city manager and city attorney, however titled.

(6)

The term "employees" shall refer to all other personnel employed by the city.

(7)

The term "compensation" shall refer to any money, gift, favor, thing of value or financial benefit conferred, or to be conferred, in return for services rendered or to be rendered.

(8)

The term "controlling financial interest" shall refer to ownership, directly or indirectly, of ten percent or more of the outstanding capital stock in any corporation or a direct or indirect interest of ten percent or more in a firm, partnership, or other business entity at the time of transacting business with the city.

(9)

The term "immediate family" shall refer to the spouse, parents, children, brothers and sisters of the person involved.

(10)

The term "transact any business" shall refer to the purchase or sale by the city of specific goods or services for consideration and to submitting a bid, a proposal in response to a RFP, a statement of qualifications in response to a request by the city, or entering into contract negotiations for the provision on any goods or services, whichever first occurs.

Ok, so far so good.  This section defines who's who, let's move on to subsection C...

(c)Prohibition on transacting business with the city. No person included in the terms defined in paragraphs (b)(1) through (6) and in paragraph (b)(9) shall enter into any contract or transact any business in which that person or a member of the immediate family has a financial interest, direct or indirect with the city or any person or agency acting for the city, and any such contract, agreement or businessengagement entered in violation of this subsection shall render the transaction voidable. Willful violation of this subsection shall constitute malfeasance in office and shall effect forfeiture of office or position. 

Could that be any clearer?  According to what we just read NO ONE defined in paragraphs (B)(1) through (6) and in paragraph (B)(9) can do any kind of business with an entity in which that person or a member of that person's immediate family has a financial interest in!  In other words, the City of South Miami can not do any business with the police chief's wife's company!  And what's the penalty for breaking this code of ethics? From the same ordinance...

Willful violation of this subsection shall constitute malfeasance in office and shall effect forfeiture of office or position.  

YIKES!

How about that?  If you're a city employee and you're caught steering business to an entity that you have an interest in or worse that's owned by a family member, your ass will get fired!  

So what now folks?  Does anyone think anything will happen to the Orlando Martinez de Castro, the chief of police of the City of South Miami, for steering work to his wife's tag agency?  I don't know, the word on the street says that there are some investigators from the county already snooping around to see what's going on...

Credibility.

Credibility, it's a simple concept.  If you have no credibility, nothing you say means anything.  For instance, the three tellers in the Airways Auto Tag Agency maintain their innocence have no credibility when on the other end of the deal they have the chief of police's wife screaming that they stole tens of thousands of dollars.  As the guy behind this blog, I have no credibility either, whether you believe I target people that I have an ax to grind with or maybe I'm just making shit up cause I'm some disgruntled fool that was slighted by the legal system.  That's why when I make an accusation or try to tell a story, I back everything up, ad nauseum, with documents so there's no doubt what I'm saying is true.  Somehow though, when the state has a victim that's been clearly discredited and stripped of all credibility, they still stick by their victim while refusing to see the truth about what's going on.  Case in point, the protagonist in my first mortgage fraud story, Bernardo Barrera.


Mr. Barrera tells the cops, namely Detective Jorge Baluja then of the Miami Dade Mortgage Fraud Task Force, that his identity had been stolen and used in the commission of a massive mortgage fraud scheme.  Now on the surface this might of made some sort of sense but I dug through the evidence and found the following facts that severely undermined Mr. Barrera's credibility...

• Mr. Barrera had committed mortgage fraud during the purchase of his own home.
• Just month before his identity was allegedly stolen in this mortgage fraud, someone else had stolen his identity for another fraud that he'd forgotten to tell the police about.
• Citimortgage, the lender that funded the fraudulent scheme had sent several letters to Mr. Barrera at his primary residence regarding this fraudulent mortgage even before it was funded.

Those are just some of the facts that we'd found that should have given any detective or prosecutor pause before moving forward with such a backwards and screwed up case.  Most importantly though, after examining a copy of Mr. Barrera's credit report, I found that in the interim between the first instance of identity theft  and the second involving the fraudulent home purchase and mortgage, Mr. Barrera pays off all his credit cards!  We're not talking just a few hundred dollars, we're talking several thousand dollars, that should have stricken law enforcement as really bizarre as Mr. Barrera had been unemployed for nearly two years at that point.  How many people do you guys know that pay off all their credit cards when they're unemployed? 


The best part of this farce was that during depositions, Mr. Barrera made no secret of paying his credit cards off, he openly admitted to it and explained that he was able to do so because his ex-wife refinanced their marital home and for some reason or another gave him the proceeds of that transaction with which he decided to pay off all his loans.  Wonderful right?  This is where we get down to the credibility issue again, Mr. Barrera's credibility should already have been suspect at this point so why would law enforcement believe anything he says now?  His ex-wife's refinance and generous cash gift to Mr. Barrera is easy to prove, it's simply a matter of going over to the County Clerk's office and checking the public records, a quick search under her name, Maribel Barrera or her maiden name Maribel Zevallos, yields the following...

The Barrera's were divorced in 2006 and Mr. Barrera paid off all his credit cards between October 2007 and January 2008.  As you can see in this screen shot from the Clerk's office, there have been no new mortgages on their marital home since 2003 therefore completely invalidating Mr. Barrera's claims of paying off his credit cards with proceeds of his wife's refinancing of their former marital home therefore further stripping any and all credibility that Mr. Barrera may have had.


So here's my question, how can a man who's been proven time and time again to lie regarding the circumstances of this alleged fraud be taken seriously by law enforcement?  How could they create a case and arrest innocent people based on the testimony of a fraudster who we've proven has done nothing but lie every time he's given a statement?  How could law enforcement be blind to this seasoned con man's lies?  I've spent the last three plus years of my life trying to figure it out.  Isn't the cops job to find the truth?  Just how much bullshit can you feed these guys before they admit they fucked up and rectify their mistakes?  Isn't it ironic that they can build a case on total bullshit and lies then the defendants have to defend themselves with facts and the truth?


Perhaps this kind of crap could have worked decades ago when there wasn't a wealth of information available online like access to property records.  With this kind of information available at your fingertips, could anyone be stupid enough to lie about something like this to the cops?

"I had to get second mortgages on my house to keep the business going"

We'll investigate that claim tomorrow...


  

The cat killer wants his pound of flesh!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.  So you've been fucked by the cops?  Perhaps the state attorneys office had a hand in railroading you with trumped up bullshit charges as well that were later dismissed?  No one's more familiar with this scenario than Tyler Weinman who was wrongfully accused of killing and mutilating 19 cats throughout south Dade county.  Despite the untold amounts of money the state had spent with the 30 different "crime scenes", 200 different witnesses that were subpoened and two different homes that were "raided" in search of evidence, the state wasn't able to pin a single cat death on Mr. Weinman.  In fact after his family spent over six figures with attorneys and forensic experts, it was revealed that the cats in question were killed by large dogs.  In other words, the state's experts as well as the Miami Dade Police Department's detectives totally bungled this case, arrested an innocent kid and essentially ruined his life.  No matter what happens, Mr. Weinman will always be known as "THE CAT KILLER" and despite the state attorneys office dropping all the charges against him, there will always be those who believe that he was guilty.

Now what?  You're name and reputation have been ruined as a result of this witch hunt to find a scapegoat for the rash of cat killings, you were exonerated in the courts yet you'll have a permanent cloud around your head no matter where you go.  What's one to do?  While there's really no way of getting free of this mess the cops have created for you, what's the next best thing?  SUE EVERYONE OF COURSE!  While the news of Mr. Weinman suing the county of the botched investigation and subsequent arrest is nothing new, I was unable to find a copy of the actual lawsuit.  I was finally able to get a copy of the 57 page lawsuit last Friday, take a look for yourselves...

Tyler Weinman Lawsuit Against Miami Dade County

It's a great read, isn't it?  Now, for those of you who feel like you've been wrongfully arrested and charged by law enforcement, say for example our tellers from the Airways Auto Tag Agency case, doesn't this lawsuit speak directly to you?  Check out the damages as a result of the botched investigation and the subsequent bullshit arrest.  Didn't you guys suffer...

• Severe mental anguish and distress?
• Extreme humiliation and embarrassment?
• Extraordinary legal expenses incurred in the defense of the unwarranted criminal prosecution and other legal expenses?
• Unwarranted incarceration?
• Loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life?
• Psychological counseling expenses?
• Loss of wages?

As the lawsuit goes on to state "these losses are permanent and continuing in nature and he will continue to suffer these damages and losses in the future".

Isn't it a shame that a bunch of amateur investigators and bullshit "experts" could go ahead and ruin someone's life?  The people that concluded that these cats were killed and mutilated by Mr. Weinman had no business coming to those conclusions, they were hardly qualified to give any kind of opinion, let alone one that was going to permanently and irreversibly alter the course of this poor kids life.  Sort of like our old friend, asshat expert mortgage fraud investigator Detective Jorge Baluja putting together a mortgage fraud case, does anyone remember how that went?  In case you've forgotten, let's refresh your recollection of Detective Baluja's grasp of the field of mortgage fraud...


Detective Baluja, what's a warranty deed?  

"Information on the person who is buying the house"

Ok, Detective, do you know what a promissory note is?

"I don't recall at this moment"

Alright then!  What's a Truth in Lending statement?

"It's a loan application"

Before we give up, does the detective know what Mortgage Fraud is?

"it's when people change numbers on forms"

Before someone get's bent out of shape and acuses me of picking on poor Detective Baluja, those are questions he was asked during a deposition in the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case and those are his actual answers.  You can find the excerpts from those depos here and here. 

It's clear that the detective investigating the Cat Killer case had no business drawing any kind of expert conclusions regarding how these cats were killed, just as Detective Baluja had no business whatsoever being anywhere near a mortgage fraud case. Yet despite their obvious lack of understanding of the subject matter at hand, they are allowed to make nonsensical conclusions that ultimately end up destroying lives.  That's fucking bullshit.


Good luck to Mr. Weinman and his attorney, Ronald Guralnick, I pray that they walk away with a massive settlement and Mr. Weinman is able to put this mess behind him. 

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...