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…
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…
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…
Let’s see what’s in the news this morning.All these political scandals lately and none involving Hollywood? Well, the City Commission wasn’t going to stand for that! Yesterday commissioners fired Gil Martinez, director of their beach community redevelopment agency, after accumulating evidence he was a reckless spender. [Miami Herald]The Broward Sheriff’s…
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…
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…
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…
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…
That’s video of an October 6 meeting of the Deerfield Beach Commission meeting at which city leaders voted to allow Island Water Sports to stage its “Midnight Madness” sales event on October 23. An innocuous bit of city business — except that according to blogger Chaz Stevens, Mayor Peggy Noland’s…
It’s been a discouraging week to be a South Floridian, so it’s high time we renew our Panning for Gold series, in which we attempt to prove that ours is the (slightly) superior civilization. Concerns about over-fishing in the Florida Panhandle led the National Marine Fisheries Service to put the…
It would have been a more fortuitous sign for Marco Rubio if Doug Hoffman hadn’t lost his congressional race in upstate New York, but the fact that a Conservative Party candidate won 45 percent of the vote has Rubio more hopeful than ever. The same can be said for the…
It’s Wednesday. Here’s the local news:A bruising campaign for mayor of Lake Worth will go a few more rounds as Rene Varela didn’t quite win enough votes to avoid a runoff with Laurence McNamara. In the Commission races, conservative Scott Maxwell beat Ron Exline and Jo-Ann Golden won reelection. [Palm…
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…
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…
David Friehling, an accountant with South Florida roots, is going to follow Bernard Madoff into prison. The Miami native entered a guilty plea today to nine felony charges. Hilariously, Friehling maintains to this day that though he rubber-stamped Madoff audits and invested with Madoff, he didn’t know that the Palm…
We can all agree with what Florida’s new senator, George LeMieux, says above, that this health-care fraud thing should stop. And he makes it sound so easy!But if you watch the longer version of that speech above, you’ll see that LeMieux’s debut piece of legislation is part of a larger,…
Among the many recent misfortunes of Jeffrey Chernick, his tax fraud case landed in Fort Lauderdale U.S. District Court rather than in Miami. That put him at the mercy of Judge James I. Cohn, who on Friday sentenced Chernick to three months in prison, despite a similar defendant’s having been…
Over on My Acts of Sedition, blogger Chaz Stevens claims to have picked up the trail of Scott Rothstein. Or at least he makes a very plausible guess about the identity of the single reader in Casablanca who has an interest in his blog. It appears that same reader followed…
This Thursday, Tamarac residents will be able to hop on a bike for free, then take it for a spin, all at the expense of Humana, a health-care corporation that’s out to encourage bicycle riding as an alternative to driving cars. But “Freewheelin,” a program that first launched in Louisville,…
What hideous things will we learn about Scott Rothstein today?Miami attorney Alan Sakowitz says he had meetings with the FBI in which he expressed suspicion that Rothstein was running a Ponzi scheme. [Sun-Sentinel]Kevin Gale, editor of the South Florida Business Journal, recounts a party at Rothstein’s Fort Lauderdale home on…
