Two New York hedge funds — Platinum and Centurion — poured an estimated $200 million into disbarred lawyer Scott Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme, according to a massive amended civil complaint filed earlier this week. Both hedge funds — which had nearly a billion dollars at their disposal — are now named as defendants in attorney…
It’s being reported on BrowardBeat that rumors swirling about Broward Circuit Judge Ana Gardiner have been confirmed: She has resigned her spot on the bench and is joining a private law firm. In return for her leaving the bench, the Judicial Qualifications Commission investigation involving ex parte communication with former prosecutor Howard Scheinberg during a…
By all rights, Tamarac should be the most boring city on Earth. The Broward suburb started, after all, as a retirement community and is still dominated by senior condo housing. It’s named after a chain of car washes that were owned by city founder Ken Behring (“Car-A-Mat” spelled backward). Here’s how the city was recently sold in a newspaper real estate special…
At one point during the commission of his $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, Scott Rothstein allegedly wrote an email in which he gave a perverse twist on the story of Robin Hood. He wrote that he stole from the rich and gave to the richer. The Rothstein quote was supplied by lawyer…
Russell Adler, former law partner of Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, is back. Adler, a Bova Prime regular who also vacationed to New York with Rothstein, filed court papers yesterday to replace Peter Sachs as attorney for former Judge Larry Seidlin and his wife, Belinda Ray Seidlin. Judge Seidlin, of course, famously presided…
UPDATED: OK, kidzzzz, get ready for a deluge of raw material from the Scott Rothstein case. I can’t physically get it to you right now, but there’s a whole lot of interesting new stuff to report. One little fun fact is that one of the nicknames that Frank Preve, who…
Video: Alu decides to go on the record in the Gardiner ex parte communication case. If the past is any indicator, Judge Ana Gardiner will likely get nasty in her defense of Judicial Qualification Commission charges that she was untruthful about her ex parte communication with a prosecutor during a murder trial. The question: Just how low…
Well, it’s come full circle. After Scott Rothstein used his connections at various local charities to meet other high rollers who sometimes invested in his Ponzi scheme, he will be the subject of a talk at one of those charities, the Boys & Girls Club, tomorrow. Rothstein gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the club. The…
Let’s go to the mailbag. First we’ll look at my exchange with Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler. Last week, I wrote that Seiler was aligned with campaign consultant and lobbyist Judy Stern. Then I wrote about Stern’s support for the police union in contract negotiations with Seiler’s city. Seiler should have known about…
Sometimes local politics can be scintillating. This is one of those times. Broward County GOP Chair Charles John “Chip” LaMarca said this morning that he is resigning his position with the party to run against Mayor Ken Keechl. OK, not exactly. LaMarca, who is also a Lighthouse Point commissioner, told me is resigning his position…
A lawyer and friend of the late Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law clerk Julie Timmerman said that Scott Rothstein swooped in on the young bartender while she was working at Riley McDermott’s and basically offered to put her through law school in exchange for her occasional companionship. “She didn’t know the…
Needless to say I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on my Judy Stern post yesterday, some of it from politicians named as having alliances with her. Broward County Commission hopeful Angelo Castillo wrote on the blog yesterday evening that “nobody owns me.” I heard from Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom,…
A lot of people know their local commissioners and other politicians who represent them by name. Well, maybe 20 percent of them anyway. Only a select few, however, know the names of the real powers in their towns and counties. I am, keeping with this morning’s theme, talking about the lobbyists who…
The so-called “Public Ethics Academy” at Florida Atlantic University is supposed to serve as something of a lifeboat of good government in Broward County’s sea of wrongdoing public officials. Instead the academy is nothing more than a symbol of the county’s ethically bankrupt nature, and it should be disbanded immediately. I say that not just because its…
Maucker, who oversaw the merger between the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel in 1982 and has been top editor since 1994, had great strengths and great flaws. In a lot of ways, he was a paradox — a corporate man to his core who managed to win the loyalty of the…
The alleged killer of scientist and Nova Professor Joseph Morrissey was once charged with a 1989 hit-style murder and was himself shot and critically wounded in a shooting in 1993. Tundidor Randy William Tundidor, Morrissey’s townhouse tenant, allegedly served as a hit man for a homicidal brake shop owner named Bentsy Muram. Muram, according to historic published reports, took out a…
UPDATED: Still out of pocket, but I’ve already read the details about the day’s dramatic developments in the comments. You guys have done an admirable job holding down the fort…
Here’s the mug shot of Randy William Tundidor, who has been charged by Plantation police in the murder of Nova Southeastern University Professor Joseph Morrissey. The 43-year-old Tundidor, whose business, Gator Tint, serviced a lot of Plantation police officers, is listed on the arrest report as six-foot-one and 297 pounds. He’s charged with premeditated murder, home invasion…
Busy with a million things but wanted to share this photo of Broward’s proposed new “ethics czar,” Norman Ostrau. It’s Ostrau arm in arm with megalobbyist Ron Book. An ethics czar to be photographed glad-handing Book is sort of like a federal organized crime prosecutor being photographed giving a smooch to Sammy the Bull. It…
UPDATE: As if this case needed to give another reminder that nobody is really safe, murder victim Joseph Morrissey lived next door to a Plantation police officer in the Secluded Garden neighborhood, which is within four blocks of the Plantation Police Department. The officer was apparently off-duty at the time, and…
UPDATE VI: In the video above is the Tundidor residence in Plantation, which was owned by Morrissey and where the homicide victim lived until a year and a half ago. I spoke to some neighbors, and they said that they hadn’t seen the suspect, Randy Tundidor, there but that his father, mother, grandmother,…
A whole lot of people in Broward County who have seen the damage done by Ponzi-scheming lawyer Scott Rothstein are now asking one question: When are we going to see more arrests? In perpetrating his $1.2 billion scam, Rothstein certainly had help. There is a slew of suspects, including bank…
