12 March 2010, 6:00 am
Scott Rothstein
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Attorneys and accountants for the court trustee in the messy bankruptcy of scamster Scott Rothstein’s collapsed law firm have asked a judge to authorize nearly $2.2 million in fees for less than three months’ work.
The biggest slice of that plump pie – more than $1.2 million – was billed by Berger Singerman, a South Florida law firm with deep ties to the Democratic Party.
“It is a significant amount of money, and there will be significant legal fees that will continue to accrue. There is a massive amount of work,” said firm partner and bankruptcy expert Paul Singerman.
Others that asked for large initial fees in the case last week: Miami accounting firm Berkowitz Dick Pollack & Brant ($611,640), and Miami law firm Genovese Joblove & Battista ($324,805). Continue reading ‘Lawyers, accountants seek big fees in Rothstein bankruptcy’ »
11 March 2010, 6:15 am
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
The smoke has cleared in the recent public dustup between State Attorney Michael Satz and Public Defender Howard Finkelstein over the quality of justice in Broward County.
Neither man has changed his mind.
Finkelstein still contends Satz favors the influential and the police over the average citizen when it comes to charging decisions. Satz calls that assertion “false and irresponsible.”
Still, important change has taken place – change that could someday spread out from the Broward courthouse and across the state. Continue reading ‘Satz, Finkelstein fight yields change at the courthouse’ »
5 March 2010, 6:27 am
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Pablo Ibar
Seth Penalver
Broward prosecutors said this week that they have cleared a Florida convict of involvement in one of the county’s most notorious crimes – the 1994 video-taped murders of a Miramar club owner and two models.
For nearly a year, the quiet investigation of inmate William Ortiz had caused the postponement of the Supreme Court ordered retrial of accused killer Seth Penalver.
Ortiz, whose name did not come up in three previous trials, is serving a life sentence upstate for burglary, assault and carjacking in Broward County. He was implicated by at least two witnesses who came forward to identify Ortiz last March after one saw a Spanish television broadcast of part of the home surveillance video in the so-called Casey’s Nickelodeon murders.
But Chief Assistant Broward State Attorney Charles Morton said Miramar detectives now discount Ortiz as a suspect. Continue reading ‘Year long probe delays retrial in case of ‘94 triple murder caught on tape’ »
25 February 2010, 6:19 am
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Tough-talking Broward Property Appraiser Lori Parrish called it a “tax dodge” four years ago when Pastor Frederick “Sonny” Irons asked her to grant his $1.9 million Fort Lauderdale waterfront estate tax-exemption as a church.
The Seafarer's Church of the Creator
“Everyone knows what a real church is, and this isn’t it,” Parrish told the Sun-Sentinel after she rejected Irons’ request.
But Parrish has changed her mind about Irons’ tiny Seafarer’s Church of the Creator.
In December, without announcement, Parrish settled a three-year-old lawsuit with Irons by agreeing to grant his application for tax-exempt status for 2006, but not for 2005. The deal reversed Parrish’s original decision to deny the exemption for both years and meant Broward’s tax collector couldn’t collect about $33,000 in property taxes assessed for 2006.
More importantly, Parrish has given her official blessing to a perpetual property tax exemption for the two-story brown brick home at 1309 SW Fifth Court where Irons and his wife, Judy, reside. That means the valuable parcel astride the north fork of the New River is now legally a church and parsonage, and the city and county can no longer collect taxes on it. Continue reading ‘Lori Parrish proposes, God disposes, pastor says’ »
19 February 2010, 6:30 am
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Lincoln Diaz-Balart
Mario Diaz Balart
South Florida congressmen are dropping left and right.
First, it was liberal Democrat Robert Wexler. He bolted mid-term last month to take a job running a Middle East think tank.
Now, it is conservative Republican Lincoln Diaz-Balart. He announced last week he won’t be running for a 10th term later this year.
Diaz-Balart, who represents voters in southwest Broward and central Miami-Dade, sought to burnish his legacy and expound on his achievements in a short departure speech that had little do with Broward. He did not say why he was leaving.
That, of course, is stoking a political guessing game.
Broward Democratic Party boss Mitch Caesar thinks Diaz-Balart’s decision to step down has a lot to do with protecting his brother, Miami U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, from possibly career-threatening political reform. Continue reading ‘As Lincoln Diaz-Balart exits, the question is why?’ »
16 February 2010, 7:00 am
By Dan Christensen
The slow motion fall of embattled PBS&J boss John Zumwalt moved rapidly toward closure over the weekend with the announcement that he had been replaced as company chairman and would soon resign.
Zumwalt’s ouster by PBS&J shareholders after five years as the company’s powerful chairman and chief executive officer was a surprise. His decision to leave on March 1 “for personal reasons” was an about-face.
John Zumwalt
Three weeks ago, Zumwalt informed employee-shareholders he would step down as day to day CEO later this year to spend “the coming months” developing PBSJ’s plans for future growth. He said nothing about giving up the chairman’s post, and had sought re-election to the board.
PBS&J is among Florida’s largest government contractors and donates heavily to political campaigns. In Broward, its highest profile job today is as co-leader of the design engineering team for the county’s $810 million runway expansion at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Continue reading ‘Scandal plagued Broward airport contractor ousts chairman’ »
9 February 2010, 7:01 am
Fort Lauderdale Police Department
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Daniel M. Zavadil no longer carries a badge. The Fort Lauderdale Police Department fired him last fall after he admitted to signing someone else’s name on an official document.
Zavadil lost his job after authorities concluded he was unfit to serve as a city police officer because of a “lack of integrity and poor judgment.”
But he’s still good enough to be a Florida lawyer.
The Florida Bar identifies Zavadil as a “member in good standing” on its public website. It lists Zavadil’s 10-year discipline history as “none.”
Officer Zavadil was admitted to the practice of law on May 4 while relieved of duty with pay and under investigation by police internal affairs. He was dismissed by the city in November for falsifying a defendant’s signature and conduct unbecoming a police officer. Continue reading ‘No longer good enough to be a police officer, but fine to be a lawyer’ »
1 February 2010, 6:58 am
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
John Zumwalt
The boss of one of Florida’s biggest government contractors has announced he’s stepping down. The news comes weeks after embarrassing disclosures about his personal involvement in a corporate pay to play scandal, and disclosures about possible corrupt payoffs overseas by company officials.
“After a decade of my executive leadership through the best of times and through difficult times it is now time to plan an orderly transition to a new CEO,” PBS&J chief executive John Zumwalt, 58, said in a prepared statement last week. Zumwalt will continue as chairman of PBS&J’s board of directors. Continue reading ‘CEO of engineering firm for Broward’s $810 million runway expansion to step down amid scandals’ »
29 January 2010, 6:46 am
Sun Village developer Frederick Elliott
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Federal prosecutors and FBI agents in South Florida are investigating allegations of yet another massive investment fraud in which thousands of investors across the U.S. and Canada are said to have lost $170 million, Broward Bulldog has learned.
The investigation began last month after a 50-page preliminary report about the “Ponzi-style” scam was sent to a Miami federal judge by a court-appointed special master. The report called for sweeping criminal probes by U.S. and Canadian law enforcement.
“The unassailable fact (is) that thousands of investors/owners, and by extension their families in the U.S. and Canada, as well as other countries, have been financially destroyed,” says the report by Miami lawyer Thomas Scott, a former federal judge and U.S. Attorney. Continue reading ‘FBI probes huge “Ponzi-style” scheme; thousands in U.S., Canada “financially destroyed”’ »
21 January 2010, 6:00 am
Jamie Solow
UPDATE: At 2 p.m. today, Jan. 22, U.S. District Judge Middlebrooks denied ex-stockbroker Jamie Solow’s request that he stay his order sending Solow to jail on Monday. The judge did, however, delay Solow’s surrender date one week to allow Solow time to appeal. Solow’s new surrender date is Feb. 1.
By Dan Christensen, browardbulldog.org
A globetrotting former stock broker who’s been living a life of luxury in Fort Lauderdale since a jury found that he defrauded hundreds of small investors who bought his risky, mortgage-backed securities has been ordered to prison indefinitely.
The unusual federal civil contempt order says Jamie Solow, 48, orchestrated a complex scheme to stash millions of dollars offshore and out of the reach of his victims and the government.
A judge last year ordered Solow to pay nearly $6 million in ill-gotten gains and civil penalties after a nine week civil trial.
The money trail that regulators have followed to collect stretches across the world – from a bank in the tiny South Pacific nation of The Cook Islands where Solow’s wife, Gina, has a $5.2 million certificate of deposit, to Swiss safe deposit boxes stuffed with cash and jewelry.
Continue reading ‘High-living stockbroker who defrauded investors won’t pay, ordered to jail’ »
