You can say a lot of things about Scott Rothstein (and you have), but one thing that's hard to question about him is his loyalty to his parents.
Through all the years, he has remained very close to his mother and father, housewife Gay and Harvey, who worked as a successful condom salesman in New York. Many of the lawyers at the Rothstein firm knew the elderly couple, and they all seemed to adore them even when they may have had serious misgivings about Scott.Which brings us to his uncle, who was called Bill Brock. His real name is William Boockvor, and he worked for Rothstein issuing checks at the firm. When people asked Boockvor what his job entailed, he would say things like, "I watch the money."
Guy obviously had his hands full.
It's widely speculated that Boockvor left the country with Rothstein when he
fled to Morocco. Firm members say that's what happened.
Rothstein's partner, Stuart Rosenfeldt, told the Wall Street Journal that Rothstein wired $16 million to someone in Casablanca before leaving. We have to imagine that he got the bulk of that cash there. He returned with a duffle bag full of cash. How much of that $16 million is missing, and did some of it go to Boockvor?
[Rothstein told me Monday that his uncle returned to America with him and only accompanied him for "moral support."]
Speaking of Morocco, it's still a mystery why Rothstein chose that country. But a clue might have come in an "urgent" email he sent out to his firm's lawyers before he fled. In the email, he claimed he had a client who needed to know the countries that didn't have an extradition with the United States and Israel. It's obviously assumed now that Rothstein was asking for his own information.
So why would Rothstein be concerned about being extradited to Israel? Who did he cross there? And does this tie into his reputed fear of organized crime? Because the Isaeli Mafia is the baddest of them all. Might he have gone to Morocco because he was safe there from both U.S. authorities and Israeli commandos? Might sound far-fetched, but there's nothing about this story that isn't.
I was thinking yesterday that Lt. David Benjamin and his boss, Sheriff Al Lamberti, must have felt tremendous relief when Rothstein returned from Casablanca. What an embarrassment to have basically escorted an international fugitive out of the country. With Boockvor, though, that still may be the case. I'd like to know more about Rothstein's "friendship" with Benjamin -- and with Lamberti, for that matter.
And finally, I ought to have a quote of the day for David Stone, whose words you must take only at face value (he's a political consultant and original dirty trickster, after all). This one comes from his blog: "Rothstein insisted I had to support [Alex] Sink and told me he had a commitment from Sink that he and Broward money man Austin Forman would 'pick all her gubernatorial appointments' and 'all the judges.'"
He also emailed me about Rothstein's recent "bugging" of the office:
"I did forget to mention that he BUGGED the entire offices with audio listen devices in about Nov-Dec of 2008," Stone wrote. "Getting my start with Dick Nixon I was NOT interested in having my conversations taped - so I stopped using the office. The staff was formally notified of the new devices that would let scott listen in to a private of phone conversation anywhere in the office. Paranoid. Controlling. Out of his league."
