Alan Farago: Eye on the Everglades

Blog: Eye on Miami

Alias: Gimleteye

Ages: 57

Primary specialty: Explaining how county commissioners, developers, and lobbyists are responsible for the real estate market meltdown and economic recession in Florida

Last job: Everglades Defense Council activist

Net worth: "My net worth derives from a family-owned manufacturing business in the Northeast that was sold to a British conglomerate in the late 1980s." Miami-Dade County property records show Farago owns a three-bedroom house in Coral Gables that he purchased in 1993 for $495,000. The property is now worth $539,666.

Criminal record: None

Blog history: After spending nearly two decades as an environmental activist, Farago and a colleague launched Eye on Miami in 2006 to shine a light on the unhealthy relationships among county commissioners, developers, and lobbyists. Farago was the first to report about the failures of homegrown financial institutions such as U.S. Century Bank, which became the single largest beneficiary of federal bailout money even though it led the state in insider deals. Farago's co-blogger, Genius of Despair, has been instrumental in revealing how the electoral process is messed up.

Why he's No. 6: By sounding the alarm about U.S. Century Bank, Farago spurred other media outlets to dig into the financial institution's brutal failure. This past October, ProPublica — a nonprofit investigative journalism outfit — published a comprehensive exposé, largely based on Farago's blog posts, about U.S. Century Bank's incestuous insider dealing while receiving the biggest loan from the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2009.

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