Corey Smith presses his face up against the thick glass window cut into the heavy steel door outside his jail cell, his shaggy hair and whispy sideburns curling off his face and the black wire of a single headphone dangling from one ear. Smith’s eyes light up as he sees the…

Has ever a public figure come completely unhinged so quickly and publicly as “Sir” Allen Stanford? Who? Richard Nixon? Lindsay Lohan? Stanford — whose sordid fall from grace we brought you last month — has now given two interviews in the weeks since the SEC charged his company with running an…

When we toured and wrote about Guantánamo Bay a couple of months ago, the military had already tossed out any pretense that waterboarding and other torture techniques had been used on inmates. But no one really knew how often the military and the CIA decided to violate the Geneva Conventions…

The rusted prow of a 35-foot boat juts out of the water’s edge in Maul Lake, a placid pool just a stone’s throw from US-1 and 163rd Street. Its cabin windows are shattered, its hull is tangled with reeds and its roof is streaked with lime green spray paint.Perched on…

Have you been swindled out of your life savings in a massive Ponzi scheme? Are you looking for the perfect way to remember all those heady days of 15 percent returns before the market collapsed? Do you just love R. Allen Stanford’s manly Texas mustache? A Florida entrepreneur has the product…

Sheets of blinding rain rolled over downtown Miami this morning and, as they passed, it was easy to remember just how close to sea level most of the Magic City lies. Five minutes of rain left pools deep enough to swallow Jeeps on NW 2nd Avenue outside Riptide Central. That’s…

Not to name any names, but some of us here at Riptide Central are none too fond of the ol’ “airplane travel” and generally consume enough drugs to kill Keith Richards before we board any airborne vehicles.It’s stories like this that fuel the phobia, even with a happy ending: A…

Boy, were we pleased when Hanley Ramirez made an empty demand for a trade earlier this spring after the team forced him to mow his cornrows. Our joy had nothing to do with wanting to see Han-Ram go; we were just happy to hear, for once, some water-cooler buzz about…

Joe Martinez seems a forthright and resolute guy. He was the first Hispanic elected by his peers to be county commission chairman. He publicly supported the highly unpopular John McCain for president. And he pushed to strip Jose Canseco’s name from a stretch of SW 16th Street after the slugger…

Inside a stuffy, overcrowded Miami-Dade misdemeanor court, a 13-year-old boy watches in awe as his lawyer artfully demands that the judge toss evidence the prosecution has against the teenager. Most days, Ben Reiss of the prestigious Greenberg Traurig firm defends commercial companies in cases with such high stakes they almost…

It’s a bright September afternoon inside the towering Miami Center on Biscayne Boulevard. From his 21st-floor office, Charles Hazlett has a clear view of Biscayne Bay’s sailboat-speckled water, the massive cruise ships docked at the port, and Bayfront Park’s emerald lawn. The six-foot-four Miami native — a ringer for Steven…

Joe Martinez seems a forthright and resolute guy. He was the first Hispanic elected by his peers to be county commission chairman. He publicly supported the highly unpopular John McCain for president. And he pushed to strip Jose Canseco’s name from a stretch of SW 16th Street after the slugger…

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 So you have to give Allen Stanford some credit for finding a way to make himself even less sympathetic today…

Note to Tim Ryan: Maybe just stay home next February. Ryan, Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation chief since 2006, hasn’t exactly built a mountain of goodwill with his majority black workforce during his three years in charge of one of the nation’s largest prison systems, with a $315 million budget and…

Well, the gig is up. Thanks a lot, reigning Miss Universe Dayana Mendoza.See, in the cover story on my trip to Guantanamo Bay a couple of months ago, I did my best to convey my impressions of the infamous prison camp as an unforgiving, desolate way station where detainees were…