The Sun-Sentinel played catch-up to the Miami Herald this morning on the Ken Jenne sweepstakes and did a decent job of explaining the mystery $20,000 loan. Almost as good as the Herald, which maintained its ownership of the story.
Interesting newspaper horserace aside, I am amazed by Jenne's cheap cunning. Think about it. The sheriff needs $20,000 to pay his income taxes and is broke (what did he do with all that money he makes, anyway? is he a crackhead, too?). Jenne knows just the guy who can loan him the money, the insanely rich developer Philip Procacci.
Problem: Getting the money from Procacci would look like a corrupt deal, since the developer rents buildings to BSO. In Florida, all it has to do is have the appearance of a quid pro quo for prosecutors to make a felony unlawful compensation case (though you wouldn't know that from the inept and sold-out Broward State Attorney Michael Satz). It need only look like a "meeting of the minds," as the Florida Supreme Court put it.
Solution: Jenne uses his own BSO secretary, Marian Yoka, as the middlewoman. He tells Procacci that Yoka needs the money. Procacci loans the money to the secretary. Then she turns around and secretly gives it to Jenne.
See? How can there be a corrupt deal when Procacci doesn't even know he's giving the money to the sheriff? There's no meeting of the minds; one side is completely in the dark.
This is just the kind of shit that can fly in Michael Satz's Broward County. You can see the SAO close-out memo now. "While it doesn't look good, no jury would convict the sheriff because there is no clear evidence of a quid pro quo." The problem for the sheriff now is that he's in the grips of the feds. And I don't think their imaginary jury is quite so clueless as the one that Satz always has in mind.
