LocalVice President Biden tried to butter up reps from the biggest union in all the land, AFL-CIO, so they'd support the stimulus bill during a meeting in Miami Beach yesterday. [AP]He also announced $8.4 billion from the stimulus package will benefit transportation, and called the Miami Intermodal Center "the wave of the future." [CBS News]Employees at Stanford Financial Miami branch, the company owned and operated by ponzi-schemer Allen Stanford (who does not deserve to be called sir), came ba
In a state still reeling from Bernie Madoff and staggering toward 10 percent unemployment, it's tough to think of many adjectives less likely to endear you to the commoners than accused billionaire Ponzi schemer.via mediaimran's flickrStanford, at left, sponsored $20 million cricket matches in the good ol' days.So you have to give Allen Stanford some credit for finding a way to make himself even less sympathetic today in his first interview since the SEC accused him of running an $8 billion Ponz
As we wrote last month, there weren't any shortages of warning signs that something was fishy at Stanford International. A number of regulators had ample opportunities to expose Stanford's fraud, from the SEC (which ignored several employee whistleblowers) to the DEA to Congress. via Liz Lomax 3D Illustrations, for Texas MonthlyThanks to some new documents made public this morning, now you can add our own Miami Herald to that list of ball-droppers. According to several hundred pages of SEC files
Bernie Madoff, the West Palm Beach financial demon who ripped off thousands of investors, many in South Florida, has been sentenced to the maximum 150 years behind bars.Â
"I'm responsible for a great deal of suffering and pain, I understand that. I live in a tormented state now, knowing all of the pain and suffering that I've created. I've left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren," Madoff said in court.
Madoff's lawyers suggested tha
A quick lesson for all the school kids feverishly getting a Riptide fix before class this morning: If you're working for a blatant Ponzi scheme (and don't worry, someday you will) and the SEC phones and tells you not to lose any documents, don't tell your employees to fire up the shredder. It's just a bad idea.
Liz Lomax 3D Illustrations for Texas Monthly​Thomas Raffanello learned that the hard way -- and he really should have known better. Raffanello, a 61-year-old Coral Gables resident
Photo via MySpace.com
Never mind the fact hat he dresses like a club promoter. If your investment manager has a MySpace page, get a new investment manager.​Forget Flagler, Tuttle, and Brickell. We need to start naming streets and bridges after a historical figure whose legacy is honored every day here in South Florida: Charles Ponzi. With heavyweight scammers Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford basing their operations here, we've become the nation's undisputed champion of the classic "Look
If ever the Miami State Attorney's Office has prosecuted a lose-lose case, the ongoing trial of former judge Phil Davis is it. Getting a conviction might just make the prosecutor's office look negligent in its past dealings with the alleged fraud organizer.​If Davis' sname sounds familiar, it's because he was one of four judges caught up in a juicy FBI sting in the mid-'90s called "Operation Court Broom." The feds snared the judges accepting bribes in brown paper bags and under car seats from
