Here's what we know: This past Tuesday, Chad Fleming, 31, from Deerfield Beach was delivered to a Massachusetts hospital -- after he had already died. In fact, doctors found he'd been dead for several hours. Fleming had been beaten to death. The man who dropped him off at the hospital, Nelson Melo, was arrested -- but not for murder. Rather, for witness intimidation.
Here's what we don't know (and it's plenty): Did Melo kill Fleming? His attorney denies that, of course. And if he did, then why did he take Fleming to the hospital? What witness did Melo intimidate? As you can see from this AP story, police are still investigating.
Just slap on those handcuffs. His name may be David R. Forget, but he remembers this drill. According to police, the registered sex offender who lived in Plantation believed -- truly believed -- that when he arrived at their meeting place, he would see the 15-year-old girl with whom he'd been having amorous online chats.
But we know how these stories end. The 27-year-old was pounced upon by the Fort Lauderdale Police, and now he's facing a new batch of child sex charges. Full release after the jump.
Deerfield's Mango Festival has been a financial juggling act
I've been stymied in my efforts to get an answer to the question I put at the bottom of this mammoth post from yesterday, about the Deerfield Beach's Mango Festival. Namely, why did the city cut the Mango Festival a check for $36,000 in June 2008?
Acting parks and recreation director George Edmunds might know, but he hasn't returned calls or emails. Nor has City Manager Mike Mahaney (update: until just a moment ago). Vice Mayor Sylvia Poitier, the festival's leading patron on the commission, isn't picking up her phone, either.
The president of the Mango Festival, Norm Edwards, didn't act on a appointment we had to discuss the issue yesterday. And he hasn't a returned a message I left for him today. So we'll have to try cracking the case without help from the people closest to it.
Lee Abrams is an infamous figure around the Sun-Sentinel newsroom. He's chief innovation officer for the Tribune Co., which owns the Sun-Sentinel, WSFL-TV (CW), the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and a slew of other newspapers and television stations across the country.
Abrams ordered the dramatic redesign of the Sun-Sentinel last year, which ushered in the era of the enormous red-and-white S, and just two stories on the front page. But he's mostly known for his "think piece" emails, which are meant to motivate and inspire the troops but are often long, exhaustive, stream-of-consciousness diatribes, littered with trademark phrases such as AFDI -- Actually Fucking Doing It.
The Oasis of the Seas, the largest ship ever built (think Noah's Ark meets the Titanic meets Rhode Island), cleared her largest obstacle this week en route to a new home in Fort Lauderdale.
AP reports that crew on the massive 20-story, $1.5 billion ocean liner lowered the telescopic smoke stacks to clear the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark. According to witnesses, the ship cleared the bridge by about two feet.
We've posted video of the gargantuan vessel (which is due to dock at Port Everglades next week) here and here, but I spoke with a Miami-based representative of Royal Caribbean yesterday.
If the man who stole the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue from the Weston liquor store thought that this blog -- which covers only major breaking crime stories -- was going to overlook this case, well, that person does not know this blog. We will solve this case, and we all we ask in exchange is for the victim to make a gift of that bottle to the New Times newsroom. But there will be plenty of time to talk about rewards. Let's look at the Broward Sheriff's Office release for clues on this caper:
The suspect was slick about his approach. After removing the bottle from the plexi-glass case where it was displayed, he grabbed another bottle and put that in its place. Store employees didn't notice the item was missing until Monday, November 2, but the entire heist was caught on surveillance video.
The tape shows a heavy-set man walking into the store Friday, Oct. 30, at around 6 p.m.
At this rate, what next? Do-It-Yourself home liposuction kits?
I know this may come as bad news to the middle-class folks with a jones for cosmetic surgery, but the days of bargain Botox may soon be over. This is the kind of article that politicians tend to clip out, then paste into a new piece of legislation. It appears to have been inspired by the death in September of Rohie Kah-Orukatan of Weston. From the New York Times:
On Sept. 25, Mrs. Kah-Orukotan, a 37-year-old nurse, entered the Weston MedSpa in Weston, Fla., for a minimally invasive liposuction procedure to remove fat from her abdomen and thighs. During the treatment, she suffered seizures and never regained consciousness.
Usually, we're skeptical when a campaigning politician cites a breaking news story as a basis for new legislation, but we'll suspend that cynicism for the moment. State Sen. Dan Gelber, Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, has seized on the recent corruption cases in Broward County to demand new laws against official misconduct.
This issue is right in Gelber's wheelhouse: He used to work in the public corruption unit of the federal prosecutor's office in Miami, meaning he worked on cases exactly like the ones those against Broward County and School Board officials. He knows the advantages that a federal prosecutor has in working with an "honest services" statute.
But now that he's a state lawmaker, Gelber also understands how much weaker Florida public corruption laws are. Here's the passage of that blog post that makes a muckraker's heart flutter:
A Griffin/Gryphon -- the mythological creature both clubs are fashioned after.
With friends like these who needs enemies? That appears to be the feeling for the owner of the Gryphon nightclub, located at the Seminole Hardrock Hotel & Casino, Michael Ault. He tells me that longtime friend and New York City club owner Adam Hoch swiped his club name's and concept, choosing to use a slightly different variation in spelling -- Griffin. Here at the Juice, we have the inside scoop into what the NY Post is calling a birdbrained club battle...
I hadn't yet heard back from Ault last week, when I expressed some disbelief at the cease and desist order Ault sent to the NYC hot spot. After all, it's located more than 1,000 miles away. In the order, Ault demands that the name of the club, which opened earlier this year, be changed or litigation will ensue. How can the NYC club be hurting Ault's business? After the jump, we'll hear what Ault has to say.
Well, it's worth a try anyway. Here's what's going on in Broward and Palm Beach counties:
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the state for its failure to provide Floridian family with a quality education -- a point for which the Palm Beach County School District drop-out rates will help to illustrate. [Palm Beach Post]
A love triangle soap opera in the Pembroke Pines Police Department, where Capt. Dan Rakofsky allegedly sent nude photos of a woman he had an affair with while she was still married to an officer under Rakofsky's supervision. That officer complained and says Rakofsky then engineered his firing. [Sun-Sentinel]
The Broward County Public Defender's Office is troubled by the number of suicides that have occurred at the jail -- seven in the last 15 months. Are inmates not being properly evaluated for mental illness? [Sun-Sentinel]
A spokesman for Gibraltar Private Bank and Trust, Peter Whalen, just released the following statement about its association with suspected Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein.
The law firm of Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler maintained traditional banking accounts with Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust for law firm operations, including payroll. Gibraltar Private immediately reached out to the court-appointed receiver for the law firm, Herbert Stettin, regarding disposition of the balances of the accounts. Gibraltar Private has not been contacted by any governmental agencies or authorities; however the bank will provide full cooperation.
One of the photos that Mango Festival organizers did not want you to see.
The Mango Festival of Deerfield Beach has a math problem: Its most recent festival, in June 2008, attracted a lot of people. But for some reason, it didn't make a lot of money. And for the city, which has invested more than a million dollars in that festival over the last several years, that should be cause for concern.
"There's nothing that we're hiding," insists the festival's president, Norm Edwards. "Everything is done by the book."
We'll see about that. After the jump, let's take a close look at how the Mango festival handles its money.
With mega swindlers like Madoff and Rothstein running rampant, a rapacious capitalist like Donald Trump is almost a sweetheart in comparison. But he does not come without flaws. The Donald faces litigation in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale for allegedly falsifying his role in the construction of two luxury towers.
The $300 million Tampa project went bankrupt last year, and now buyers are planning to sue. They're outraged to learn that the tycoon merely lent his name in a licensing deal with Tampa Bay developer SimDag Robel LLC. Buyers apparently hoped they were getting both the Trump name and the mogul's sterling reputation as an honest deal-maker. I swear, I almost wrote that last part with a straight face.
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department has provided new information on the shooting by its officer yesterday afternoon near the bus station downtown. The man shot has been identified as 20-year-old Jonas Joseph. From the release:
Sergeant Dean Schoen, a 12-year-veteren, received information from a citizen that the suspect, Jonas Joseph was armed with a knife. Sergeant Schoen located and approached the suspect at which time Joseph brandished a knife. According to multiple witness accounts, Sergeant Schoen repeatedly demanded Joseph to drop the knife. Joseph did not comply and instead advanced towards the sergeant. Sergeant Schoen, in fear for his life, fired rounds at the suspect and struck him. Joseph ran away and collapsed in front of the bus terminal. He was rushed to Broward General Medical Center and does not appear to have life-threatening injuries. He will be charged with Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon on a Law Enforcement Officer.
During the incident, a bystander, Luis Redina, 1/1/56, was inadvertently struck. He has been treated and released.
The Rock of Gibraltar: a more stable fixture on the globe than Rothstein's Gibraltar Bank accounts.
With investigators already sifting through the documents left behind in Scott Rothstein's law office on Las Olas, it's only a matter of time before they take their warrants across the street to the front doors of Gibraltar Private Bank and Trust.
The Sun-Sentinel coverage has focused on TD Bank, which is also across the street. But my sources tell me that Gibraltar just might be home to the mother lode.
The man who presides over Gibraltar's office, John Harris, told me yesterday he couldn't comment on the case. He directed me to the bank's marketing department, which in turn directed me to a public relations firm. I asked that spokesman, Peter Whalen, whether his clients at Gibraltar held assets for Rothstein. "They're not going to confirm or deny that," he said, citing federal banking privacy laws.
But today, along with this article, the Miami Herald has posted an inventory of the documents being seized from Rothstein's office, and that's turned up plenty of Gibraltar accounts.
In a post yesterday that's part of our Panning for Gold series, I made a crack about how it's rather foolish to trust a charter fisherman's hunch about the sustainability of fish population -- not just for the obvious fox-running-the-hen-house reasons. Mainly, it's because there's a much more reliable, objective means for ascertaining fish population: the federal government's science-based research tools.
As if on cue, Florida's Broward-born, shiny-new senator, George LeMieux, can be seen in the video above (also from yesterday) asking the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to relax restrictions against fishermen like those who protested recently in Fort Walton Beach, claiming they knew the fish population better than government researchers.
It's a good thing Scott Rothstein isn't a more diabolical criminal mastermind. On Tuesday, I pulled county documents that show how he transferred several Fort Lauderdale properties -- whose total value came to about $13 million -- into the hands of individual private corporations registered in Delaware, which happens to be the state that most closely guards the identity of a corporation's owners. It stands to reason that these maneuvers aimed to protect those assets from seizure in the inevitable event that his scheme was discovered.
But if that was the reason, it seems Rothstein overlooked the most obvious means for protecting his own Fort Lauderdale home: the Florida homestead exemption.
Records show that Rothstein took out a $4.5 million private mortgage
Cliff Claven endorses mouthwash as a mailman's way out of a DUI. Just don't drink the whole bottle.
Just after noon today, Boynton Beach Police responded to a report that a mailman was slumped over the wheel of his mail truck. Cops say that the mailman, Kevin Michael Crocilla, then scored a spectacular .264 on a Breathalyzer test -- more than three times the legal limit. From the police press release:
When officers arrived, it immediately became apparent that Crocilla, 29, was intoxicated. He fell asleep while officers were speaking to him, smelled of mouthwash and alcohol, couldn't stand on his own and his eyes appeared red and watery.
He told officers with the Boynton Beach Police Department's Traffic Unit that he drank wine all night and then drank half a bottle of mouthwash in an attempt to cover the smell.
Crocilla was taken to the Palm Beach County Jail.
And I daresay that no inmate had breath as minty fresh as Crocilla. Shame that there's so much alcohol in mouthwash though.
John Hammond, a 37-year-old man who had been in the Broward Main Jail since last week for stealing a car, committed suicide Tuesday night, according to a Broward Sheriff's Office news release:
On November 3, a BSO detention deputy was conducting a security check around 9 p.m. when he was alerted by an inmate that his cellmate had just hanged himself. The deputy immediately got the victim, John Hammond, down and started cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) until relieved by medical staff. Hammond was transported to Broward General Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 9:48 p.m.
Details remain vague, but Fort Lauderdale Police are investigated a shooting that occurred near the Broward County bus terminal downtown involving an off-duty officer. From the release:
Preliminary investigation has revealed that a Police Sergeant was working an off-duty detail at the Broward County Main Bus Terminal. The Sergeant was advised that there was an armed male at 300 Northwest 1 Avenue. The Sergeant advised via radio that he needed an emergency back-up to his location. A few moments later the Sergeant advised via police radio that shots had been fired and he requested EMS. The suspect, who was shot, ran away on foot southbound towards the main bus terminal. The suspect was apprehended at the bus terminal and was transported to Broward General Medical Center. The suspect is currently in surgery.
A second person was struck at 300 Northwest 1 Avenue. Detectives are currently working with witnesses to determine exactly how that person was shot.
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department will have a press conference in one hour to give information on a shooting that involves a cop. That's all the information that's available at the moment. We'll update when there's more.
South Florida's Jewish community just can't catch a break. First Bernie Madoff, now an alleged Ponzi scheme by Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein -- what gives?
Madoff lured Jewish friends at the Palm Beach Country Club to be investors in his Ponzi scheme, and when his fraud collapsed, Jewish charities lost hundreds of millions of dollars. It's not yet clear how Rothstein's scandal will impact Jewish investors -- although Yeshiva World News is buzzing with rumors that the Orthodox community in Brooklyn may have lost millions.
One thing is obvious: Rothstein's imprint on the Fort Lauderdale Jewish community is indelible and very visible. The chabad center on Broward Boulevard bears his name -- the Rothstein Family Downtown Jewish Center Chabad.
ESPN's Jeremy Schaap (the best sports journalist in television for our money) put together a fantastic package on the former Yankees catcher and one-time World Series hero that included Leyritz's first televised remarks about the drunk driving accident that killed a Fort Lauderdale woman two days after Christmas 2007.
Three hours after the crash, Leyritz's blood-alcohol level was .14, nearly twice the legal limit. Fredia Veitch, the mother who died on the scene, had a .18 at the time of the wreck. Though he is charged with DUI Manslaughter, Leyritz put the blame on Veitch.
Ever since lawyer Scott Rothstein went missing last week, only to return to the country amid allegations of running a $400 million Ponzi scheme, some observers have wondered how this news might affect one of the story's subplots: the March 2008 murder of Melissa Britt Lewis, a young attorney who worked in Rothstein's firm.
In this article by Bob Norman, Rothstein told Norman that Debra Villegas, another employee, handled all of his accounting. Villegas's husband, Tony Villegas, was eventually charged with the murder of Lewis. The motive was supposedly revenge for Lewis's closeness with Debra. As the murder story unfolded last year, Bob Norman described the case as "mind-boggling" and reported how Debra Villegas had given seemingly conflicting statements to separate media outlets.
This week's New Times feature details my foray into the world of scambaiting -- the practice of turning the tables on email scammers by playing along as a gullible victim -- with advice from a worldwide scambaiting site called 419Eater whose main administrator lives in Broward County.
In Nigeria, the people who run 419 scams -- those pesky, fraudulent emails that fill up your spam folder promising payouts of millions of dollars -- call themselves "Yahoo-yahoo Boys," after their favorite email service. It's been estimated that 250,000 internet scammers operate in Lagos alone, and the promise of easy money from gullible Europeans has created an industry centered around internet cafes, where teen-aged boys and girls congregate to send out mass emails. Or, as pictured in the video after the jump, they just work from home (discussed in this excellent article).
Above, African hip-hop artist Olu Maintain celebrates the Moet and Hennessey that goes along with being a Yahoo Boy. And after the jump, another much more explicit new song by Prince Hollywood -- not in English, but you get the drift. Those are definitely "Benjamins" they're throwing around.
Just got hold of Debra Villegas, the chief operating officer of Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, who Scott Rothstein claimed handled his financial affairs. Earlier today I wondered aloud whether Villegas knew that there was something fishy about Rothstein's investments. I asked her that question. She said: "I have no comment to the media whatsoever."
Last year, Villegas' estranged ex-husband Tony was arrested for the murder of Melissa Britt Lewis, an attorney at Rothstein's firm and Debra Villegas' best friend. That incident was the reason Rothstein cited for hiring a security detail off-duty cops to guard his home.
As Daily Pulp reported, Rothstein himself returned to Fort Lauderdale this afternoon. The lawyer is said to be negotiating a deal with federal officials.
Starting this past July, attorney Scott Rothstein began a series of deed transfers that, given the allegations about his financial misdeeds, figure to interest his many investors. Broward County records show that on July 22, Rothstein transferred a $1.9 million property on Castilla Isle in Fort Lauderdale from his name to a Delaware limited liability corporation, CI 08. The Broward County Property Appraiser's website shows that he paid $2.73 million for the property in 2005.
A few weeks later, on August 10, Rothstein did the same with another parcel he owned on Castilla Isle, transferring this $2.2 million property into a Delaware corporation called CI 27. That same day he transferred this $1.33 million parcel to CI 07 and this $1.4 million parcel to CI 16. That's nearly $8 million in real estate that figures to grow in value when the economy bounces back -- all controlled by corporations in Delaware, which the Tax Justice Network found to be the world's most notorious tax haven.
Contributors: Eric Barton, Michelle Centrone, Deirdra Funcheon, Keith Hollar, John Linn, Michael J. Mooney, Bob Norman, Lisa Rab, Nicole Rodriguez, Gail Shepherd.
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