Dispatches from Krome Detention Center

As those of you following our story on South Miami handyman Warren Papove know, Mr. Papove is still sitting in Krome Detention Center awaiting deportation.  From what I'm told he's been there now for over 100 days.  We received a letter from Mr. Papove back in September describing the conditions over at Krome...

Greetings from Krome; a legal limbo land where rights aren't given by the constitution, but by ICE agents. After 68 days I haven't seen a judge or my deportation officer. Apparently I have the right to neither. You see in 1988  I signed a voluntary deportation order in California. It was explained to me that I couldn't return for 5 years. In Nov'93  I returned via Amtrak from Montreal to Mobile, Alabama where I continued working with my employer. Later in Florida he abandoned myself and another worker. He owed us both bonuses.      On the word of a snitch and a single ICE officer this deportation order was reinstated denying me any right to see a judge. The deportation officer assigned to me has left her job and did little prior to leaving. I've not spoken to her or her replacement. The officers  come on UNIT for about 10 minutes on Thursdays. 5-7 officers for 60-65 people. Mine doesn't show although the others claim he/she is downstairs and will be up shortly.        Allow me to clarify my most serious offense,Cocaine possession. Threre was no cocaine, there was a pipe with residue. I was sentenced to 24 HOURS OF PROBATION !!       After having access to me denied by a Canadian Consular official I visited  with MIAMI HERALD REPORTER ANDREA TORRES.She was physically removed part way through our visit. I was transferred the next day to Glades facility in Moore Haven. Transfers are not only due to overcrowding. They are also used as punishment for those who dare fight their case.      Transfers involve hours of waiting, shackled  at both the departure and arrival sites besides shackled traveling. All non-local calls are $2.85 connection fee and 50 cents / Minuit. Visiting is hindered , envelope procurement is interrupted and money earned ( $1.00 /day is possible ) is partially transferred and partially confiscated. Case defense suffers. The day after my transfer to Glades I was charged Federally with REENTRY and returned to Krome for a few hours before being sent to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in downtown Miami.      I saw a judge for bail purposes only. Only a quarter of a million dollars. One week later the charge was dismissed. I didn't get to see the judge. While  in Federal prison I was hungry. Lunch was often a sandwich and soup. If you hadn't somehow already bought a bowl you couldn't get the soup! No drink without purchase of a cup either. No water fountain. There was a sink, remember I was not convicted of anything, nor had I seen a judge regarding case merit.       Now I'm back at Krome where the guards are privately contracted (DOYON)  but ICE makes all relevant rules and decisions so there is a layer of separation.          Hundreds of people have passed through since I've been here have been deported before. I know two others charged with RE-ENTRY. One has twice served 4 year sentences, the other has a more lengthy record.          After  90 days they must review my case. They could renew the 90 day process in perpetuity. Unlawful confinement?          Most people I've talked to here have children and either wives, finances or girlfriends/ ex's. Most will be leaving voluntarily or by force. Your tax dollars hard at work here now will undoubtedly be working hard in the future.       Thanks for everyone who has supported me. Warren Papove, Krone Detention Center, Sept 12,2012

If that wasn't bad enough, the next letter we got last week certainly was...

Greetings  from Krome,      Well CO [Corrections Officer] Summers caught some homosexual activity in the shower last night and the one guy was shipped out hours later. A start. The other guy is the problem. He sings. A lot. In a fake feminine voice.       While I was in the bathroom with the regulars working out with a bag of water in a laundry bag he came up o the chest high wall and poked his head over. As I'm curling the bag he smiles at me demonically and says, "Look Killer's working out". Then he comes around. I tell him to get the ______ out of my space. He refuses. So I put down the bag and charge him. He bails out and runs to the center of a foreigner prayer circle. It's like a mix of Santeria and other religions. They're all talking in foreign languages at the same time  laying their hands on him, but in this exorcism the poltergeist is running the show. Then there's CO Foote. Severely overweight, bad hair and a bad attitude. A spinster in the making. In the cafeteria line she wants me to close a 3foot gap with the poltergeist, I refuse, she threatens "Sergeant" ( for discipline) but the other Canadian intervenes and prevents me from being boxed. Foote is left drooling. She smelled blood and was denied. I sense denial is a recurring theme in the nightmare that must be her life.      There's CO Garnett, the mail call guy, who's pretty civil and will go out of his way as much as he can to help people send or receive mail and use the library. There's also CO C. Hinson who disrespected "Chihuahua" and a dozen others so severely I thought he was about to get hurt. He was lucky. If he's smart he'd change career paths. He won't stay lucky forever.       There's Brito, the ICE agent who tries to intimidate people as if people who've endured this crap can be scared by his death stare. Yeah Brito, you're a tough guy. Everyone's impressed. The ICE guys who do shakedowns along with the DOYON private security are a comedy of intimidation techniques. Like drunken NY Jets fans, you know the ones I'm talking about with their Joe Klecko jerseys that are 5 sizes too small because it ain't the 80's anymore, puking in a trash can while their 10 year old son holds their beer for them. Substitute arms for beer bellies.       The poltergeist is singing again. I'm trying to write. My eyes are blurring. A surgical glove nearby stops him/her cold. Thank you CO Summers. I finally spoke to my deportation officer on Thurs Sept 20 to ask about my status. He said I had pending charges of re-entry they were going to prosecute. Those charges were dismissed August 22, a month ago. At any point does a confinement become unlawful when they don't have to follow their own rules? I was hoping you could bring this to the appropriate people's attention, particularly because they see no need for judges in certain cases. Thanks for your help. Warren Papove

YIKES!  Incredible that this poor man, who was nothing more than collateral damage in a political war at the City of South Miami, is still sitting in detention.  What purpose does it serve at this point not to deport this man back to Canada?

So what's the big deal about altering an email?

No big deal for you and me as average citizens but a completely different situation if you're a government employee or heaven forbid an elected official!  We left off last time discussing the issue of a potentially altered and forged email that City of South Miami Commissioner Valerie Newman allegedly forwarded to her minions.  The email was originally from the City of South Miami assistant city clerk and as we said the other day, the original email was fairly innocuous.  

The problem arose when Commissioner Newman forwarded that innocent email to her friends, somehow there was a whole other paragraph in that email that magically appeared when it left the commissioner's outbox, here it is in case you need your memory refreshed...

By inserting this extra paragraph or so into the original email, it appears as if the intent was to make the reader believe that this text came from non other than the assistant city clerk.  In case either our readers or the folks over at the Miami Dade County Ethics commission haven't been able to figure out why this is wrong and downright ILLEGAL, let's take a look at Florida Statute 839.13...

Title XLVI CRIMES  

Chapter 839

OFFENSES BY PUBLIC OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES

839.13 Falsifying records.—

(1) Except as provided in subsection (2), if any judge, justice, mayor, alderman, clerk, sheriff, coroner, or other public officer, or employee or agent of or contractor with a public agency, or any person whatsoever, shall steal, embezzle, alter, corruptly withdraw, falsify or avoid any record, process, charter, gift, grant, conveyance, or contract, or any paper filed in any judicial proceeding in any court of this state, or shall knowingly and willfully take off, discharge or conceal any issue, forfeited recognizance, or other forfeiture, or other paper above mentioned, or shall forge, deface, or falsify any document or instrument recorded, or filed in any court, or any registry, acknowledgment, or certificate, or shall fraudulently alter, deface, or falsify any minutes, documents, books, or any proceedings whatever of or belonging to any public office within this state; or if any person shall cause or procure any of the offenses aforesaid to be committed, or be in anywise concerned therein, the person so offending shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.
(2)(a) Any person who knowingly falsifies, alters, destroys, defaces, overwrites, removes, or discards an official record relating to an individual in the care and custody of a state agency, which act has the potential to detrimentally affect the health, safety, or welfare of that individual, commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. For the purposes of this paragraph, the term “care and custody” includes, but is not limited to, a child abuse protective investigation, protective supervision, foster care and related services, or a protective investigation or protective supervision of a vulnerable adult, as defined in chapter 39, chapter 409, or chapter 415.
(b) Any person who commits a violation of paragraph (a) which contributes to great bodily harm to or the death of an individual in the care and custody of a state agency commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. For the purposes of this paragraph, the term “care and custody” includes, but is not limited to, a child abuse protective investigation, protective supervision, foster care and related services, or a protective investigation or protective supervision of a vulnerable adult, as defined in chapter 39, chapter 409, or chapter 415.
(c) Any person who knowingly falsifies, alters, destroys, defaces, overwrites, removes, or discards records of the Department of Children and Family Services or its contract provider with the intent to conceal a fact material to a child abuse protective investigation, protective supervision, foster care and related services, or a protective investigation or protective supervision of a vulnerable adult, as defined in chapter 39, chapter 409, or chapter 415, commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. Nothing in this paragraph prohibits prosecution for a violation of paragraph (a) or paragraph (b) involving records described in this paragraph.
(d) This section does not prohibit the disposing or archiving of records as otherwise provided by law. In addition, this section does not prohibit any person from correcting or updating records.
(3) In any prosecution under this section, it shall not be necessary to prove the ownership or value of any paper or instrument involved.
History.—s. 19, Feb. 10, 1832; RS 2571; GS 3483; RGS 5357; CGL 7492; s. 1023, ch. 71-136; s. 1, ch. 2002-386; s. 2, ch. 2007-174.

That's right!  If you're caught screwing around with documents or in this case emails, according to the letter of the law...

 ...the person so offending shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

LOL!  That's some pretty serious shit right there folks, if indeed Commissioner Newman did alter this email, her ass is toast.  Like we said on Tuesday, we've already filed a formal complaint with the ethics commission outlining the potential infraction, now let's sit back and see what happens.  

Tomorrow we'll discuss the potential ramifications of this alleged act of forgery and we'll also discuss the back of this email, a story so disturbing it may make you not want to ride your bike through the City of South Miami!

The tale of two emails...

Fucking emails...

All day, all night my inbox is constantly buzzing with emails.  With the exception of the nonsensical emails my friends send me, I don't know what I'd do without email.  I can't even begin to tell  you how many times emails have saved my ass by memorializing conversations that I've had were the other people involved had conveniently forgotten critical parts of our conversations that were to my benefit.  

Regardless, what a lot of people seem to somehow forget is that emails create a permanent record of conversations that can be referred back to when the contents of the conversation are in question.  This is particularly useful, or troublesome depending on the content of the email, if you're a public official in the state of Florida who is subject to the states wide ranging Sunshine Laws regarding public records.  Take for example this email that was sent from City of South Miami deputy city clerk Nikki Payne to City of South Miami Commissioner Valerie Newman...

Email From Nikki Payne to Valerie Newman

No big deal, this is simply an email from the deputy city clerk in response to a public information request from Commissioner Newman regarding the arrest of a man named Davidson Schmich (we'll discuss this case later).  In response to the public information request the clerk simply says...

Good afternoon,
Attached please find the information regarding your public records request.
Thanks,

Simple enough right?  Now look what happens to that very same email that city clerk sent to Newman at 4:23 September 21, 2012 when the commissioner forwarded it to her peeps...

Email From Nikki Payne to Valerie Newman Altered

NO SHIT?

Did you guys catch that?  Let's look at the contents of the original email again...

Now look at the altered version of this email that Commissioner Newman sent out to her cronies...

Where the hell did this part come from?

LOL!  We've busted City of South Miami Commissioner Valerie Newman tampering with then sending out a fraudulent email!

So why the hell would the Commissioner feel the need to commit fraud by sending out this obviously altered email?  Could she have had any other intention than to mislead the reader into thinking that the City Clerk had sent the email with the extra couple of paragraphs rather than that rather innocuous first email that was simply acknowledging a public records request?  This seems like nothing more than a simple case of FRAUD with a side dish of FORGERY!

We'll get into the back story and explore her possible reasons for this major ethical lapse tomorrow, in the mean time, we're going to forward Commissioner Newman's foray into the world of fraud to our friends over at the Miami Dade County Ethics Commission...

It's Columbus day!

It's a quasi holiday where half the shit is open and the other half is closed with no rhyme or reason.  If that wasn't enough, we're celebrating a fraud as well!  Regardless, we'll consider this lame holiday a day off for us, stay tuned though as we've uncovered a City of South Miami commissioner committing fraud and we've managed to get a copy of the police report we discussed last week...

More trouble over at the City of South Miami

Looks like things are heating up again over at the "city of pleasant living". Our sources tell us that a certain detective that we've written about before was caught in an compromising position in the backseat of a car in or around the Winn Dixie parking lot in South Miami. The problem is that the female he was caught with was allegedly either underage or was eighteen and was under his charge as part of a South Miami youth organization.

We're told that the pd conducted an investigation that resulted in the detective receiving a one day suspension from the department. Did you expect anything else from a department run by a corrupt chief like Orlando Martinez de Castro?

We've already put in a public information request for the detectives ia file and will update as soon as we get it. Karma's a bitch ain't it Detective?

Party time, another anniversary...

I've been feeling a bit under the weather lately therefore the lack of posts over the last week.  I started to get my shit together this afternoon when I realized that tomorrow is October 3, which would make it the fifth anniversary of the Miami Dade County Mortgage Fraud Task Force's first case and also the fourth anniversary of the arrests in the Bernardo Barrera mortgage fraud case that turned my family's life inside out. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the Barrera mortgage fraud story, it's a case that was hobbled together in a rush by a rookie MDPD detective, Jorge Baluja, and a washed up assistant state attorney, Bill Kostrzewski, where they took the word of a unemployed serial fraudster named Bernardo Barrera, who claimed that his identity was stolen and used in the commission of a massive mortgage fraud scheme. Unfortunately, the state put together the case without properly investigating and overlooked the fact that alleged "victim" was himself an integral part of the mortgage fraud scheme. Once we uncovered Mr. Barrera's complicity in this scheme, he quickly uprooted and hauled ass to Panama. What's troublesome though is even though we presented overwhelming evidence of Mr Barrera's complicity to the state attorneys office, to this day they refuse to go after him.

So where's everyone now?  As we mentioned before, Mr. Barrera after selling whatever he had in the United States, hauled ass and escaped to his native Panama safe from extradition to the United States.  How about the assclown detective that put together the bullshit case?  From what I've been told, he's been demoted several times, most recently to driving a marked patrol car in the Northside District of Miami Dade County.  That's a far cry from his days as a detective on the MDPD Economic crimes unit, isn't it?  How about that dipshit prosecutor, Bill Kostrzewski, who tried to prosecute the case?  I'm told that he's been taken off any meaningful prosecutions and relegated to petty bullshit economic crimes cases.  Nice.  So much for that headline case he put together that appeared all over the news early that October back in 2008.

What amazes me the most though since I started writing this blog is how some criminal prosecutions make headlines yet others manage to escape the spotlight.  When Mr. Kostrzewski went after my wife, somehow both he and the state attorneys office managed to get a press release to anyone in the media with a pulse, yet after following such cases for four plus years now I can't believe how many other cases that should have been in the media somehow were never mentioned.  A perfect example would be the Veldora Arthur mortgage fraud case.  There wasn't a single peep about that case until we broke it here on our blog.  I wonder why?  Wasn't a City of Miami assistant fire chief getting federally indicted for millions of dollars worth of fraud newsworthy?

I've come to realize over the last few years that the main ingredient in keeping this blog going is anger, specifically my anger towards those in law enforcement and the state attorneys office that abuse their powers to destroy innocent people's lives in order to further their own goals.  Need examples?  How about the three tellers that were railroaded Detective Baluja in the Airways Auto Tag case as a favor to the City of South Miami's police chief?  Can you think of an abuse of power worse than that? 

So what now?  Four years after the "headline case" that prosecutor Kostrzewski and detective Baluja put together was filed, have we achieved anything?  I like to think we have.  I have to believe that we played some part in getting Mr. Baluja demoted and I know that we are, at least in part, responsible for getting prosecutor Kostrzewski thrown off the mortgage fraud task force within the state attorneys office.  Is that enough?  I think not.  We have some more work to do, I'm going to start talking about some of the things the state attorneys office did to me over the last few years and for shits and grins, we're going to try to get at least one member of the Baluja clan arrested.  Stay tuned...

The Miami New Times and the Miami Herald pick up our Ana Alliegro story.

Our friend Francisco Alvarado over at the New Times picked up our story on "republican bad girl" Ana Alliegro's criminal past and was nice enough to give us credit for our work, his story can be found here.  Also, Marc Caputo from the Miami Herald also picked up our story yet somehow forgot to give us credit.  Oh well.  More tomorrow...