Or so she thought.
When Bernard called 411 and asked for Legal Aid, she recalls, she received a number that led her to a recording of a man's voice. She left a message and the next day got a call from a woman who identified herself as Andrea, from the Florida Legal Association (FLA). Then a man took the receiver and identified himself as Jorge Fernandez. He said he'd be happy to take her case, but it would cost $450.
Aghast she queried, "Why's it going to cost me $450 if this is Legal Aid?"
Fernandez responded that Legal Aid didn't really help people for free. Instead, he said, charges vary based on income. Because she was supporting four people on about $16,000 per year, she qualified for the $450 rate, he explained. By August, when she had scraped up the money, her situation had become more urgent. She and her family were living in her ex-husband's house, which was for sale. Soon she'd have to move out. She called Fernandez back, and he sent her some paperwork. On August 7 she drove to a ritzy office building at 8201 Peters Rd. in Plantation to return the forms and hand over a check.
She says she called back the next day to see how things were going. They weren't. Whenever she dialed Fernandez's number during the next few days, she got a recording or a secretary saying he was out of the office. Suspicious, she sent him an e-mail insisting upon the return of her money. He called back then but didn't even remember what her case was about or what he'd promised to do for her. She again demanded her money back. He said he would have to talk to his supervisor.
By then thoroughly alarmed, she hurried to her bank to stop payment on the check. It had been cashed the previous day. She hasn't heard a word from Fernandez since. Her encounter with him has left Bernard wondering how she'll make ends meet. "Right now I'm moving into a new place, and that $450 would come in real handy," she says.
When Bernard called 411 again, she received a different number for Legal Aid. When she complained about Fernandez, an office worker told her Fernandez was not employed there. Upon her asking about him at the Florida Bar Association's Miami office, she describes the reaction of the person with whom she spoke this way: "Oh, my God, this person again."
"I was under the impression that he was a lawyer," Bernard says.
He's not, and Legal Aid offices in Broward and Miami-Dade counties confirm that he has never been connected with them. Although Fernandez has identified himself to clients as a paralegal when pressed, the clients agree that he puts on a convincing show: dressing well, driving expensive cars, sitting in lavish offices. He accompanies the look, several clients claim, with phrases like: "I'll be happy to take your case," "I've been practicing," and "I'll represent you," but he never actually says, "I'm a lawyer."
More than a dozen people in the past few months have complained to the Florida Bar and local police departments that, when they called 411 to reach Legal Aid societies in Broward and Miami-Dade, they received FLA's number. The Florida Bar identifies that mysterious firm as one person: Jorge Fernandez. According to the Bar complaints, hopeful clients met him in offices on the ninth floor of 1221 Brickell Ave. in Miami and at the Plantation site. (One complaint alleges he had a similar office in Orlando.) But those facilities were apparently all show, rented briefly to impress prospective customers. Now all phone numbers listed for those locations are disconnected, except for one Broward line, which is connected to an answering machine for "Florida Legal."
New Times found Fernandez in a tile-roofed, pink, $225,000 house in Surfside. A late-model, black Mercedes with California tags was parked in the driveway. When a reporter knocked, the slim, 26-year-old Fernandez was just emerging from an afternoon shower with his dark hair slicked back and a patch of stubble on his chin. When the reporter identified himself, Fernandez slammed the door. A few seconds later, he emerged from the house in a flapping velvet shirt and chased the reporter down his driveway, snarling, "Hey fat boy, get off my property, you hear? Get off my property, you understand?" He stomped back to his house and disappeared without further comment.
