Another Day, Another Caribbean-Based Ponzi Scheme

Forget Edison, Franklin, even Steve Jobs. If there’s one innovator we truly love and respect here in South Florida and the Caribbean, it’s Charles Ponzi.The guy, let’s face it, invented pretty much the best scheme ever. Why do complicated stuff like “invest money” when you can just take it and…

‘The Fix Is In’: Now Where the F Are All Those New Jobs?

So much for protests. Taxpayers are on the hook for a $634 million new playground for the Marlins, and the biggest grassroots organizer against the project says he wishes he hadn’t wasted his time fighting it.”The fix is in. It was a dog-and-pony show,” says Michael Burnstine, an insurance salesman who…

March Mental Illness In Miami! Live Blogging Courtside at AA Arena

‘Madness’ is a pretty outdated term — offensive really — so at Riptide we prefer to classify what’s going down at American Airlines Arena this afternoon a little more precisely. Our psychologists are rolling out a diagnosis of paranoid basketball schizophrenia with a touch of hoops paranoia and a major…

Riptide’s Guide on Who to Hate During Miami’s March Madness

By now you’ve seen the brackets so many times you know North Dakota State’s mascot by heart and you’ll break down in tears if another person mentions President Obama’s picks. But are you really ready for Miami’s first-round matchups tomorrow at the AA Arena? More important, do you know whom to mercilessly…

Irish Blood

A Cutler Bay man funneled money to the Irish terrorists who murdered two British soldiers in Belfast earlier this month, federal prosecutors say in a complaint unsealed in Miami-Dade court and obtained by New Times. For at least three years, Roman Vidal, age 57, allegedly smuggled millions of dollars’ worth…

Miami HIV Scammers Guilty of $5.3 Million Medicare Fraud

A federal jury this week convicted two doctors and two assistants of bilking Medicare for millions of dollars by setting up a bogus HIV clinic in Miami, the State Attorney’s office tells Riptide, the latest conviction in a racket that’s quickly become the Magic City’s seamiest new claim to crooked…

Arizona, The Worst NCAA Tourney Bid Ever, Headed To Miami

They didn’t win 20 games. They finished .500 in a mediocre conference. Their best player is a goofy looking white guy. They lost five of their last six games of the season. Yet somehow the geniuses running the NCAA selection committee added up these facts and decided that the Arizona Wildcats…

Memo From Baghdad: Miami Soldier Says Obama’s Withdrawal Plans Will Work

Capt. Agustin Dominguez understands the ebb-and-flow of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as only a battle-hardened soldier who’s been there truly can.Dominguez, a Miami native and ’98 grad of Palmetto Senior High, followed a stint in northern Iraq from ’03-’04 with a tour of duty in Afghanistan from ’05…

Thanks For Ruining the World Baseball Classic, Netherlands

Here’s something you don’t know: In the Netherlands, professional baseball is called Honkbal Hoofdklasse. Something else you don’t know? A single player on the Netherland’s World Baseball Classic team, which shocked the honkbal world by somehow taking down a powerhouse, all-star Domincan Republic club in the 11th inning last night…

Yes, Those Are Slaves On The Steps of The Florida Capitol Today

If you happen to wander by the Capitol on your daily stroll around Tallahassee today, yes, that is in fact a truck full of farm workers being beaten into unpaid slave labor right on the steps of the Florida Legislature.A few months after the latest slavery bust in Immokalee –…

New Tax Might Kill Miami’s Cigar Rollers

Tendrils of earthy smoke snake through a room on the edge of Little Havana, past old men in guayaberas slapping dominoes on a folding table and a long counter where a wrinkled 80-year-old brews espresso. Near the front window facing NW Seventh Street, Dionisio Gonzalez gently peels a cured deep-brown…

Obama’s New Cigar Tax Might Just Kill Miami’s Torcedores

Tendrils of earthy smoke snake through a room on the edge of Little Havana, past old men in guayaberas slapping dominoes on a folding table and a long counter where a wrinkled 80-year-old brews espresso. Near the front window facing NW Seventh Street, Dionisio Gonzalez gently peels a cured deep-brown…

Where’s Omar Khadr Going? Not Back to Canada Anytime Soon

As President Obama tries to keep his pledge to close Gitmo by next January, his biggest challenge — as told in-depth in your New Times this very week — is figuring out what to do with guys like Omar Khadr. Khadr, the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay and the only…

Guantanamo’s Final Days

The soldiers move through the wheat field, scanning the windswept plain for signs of trouble. There are six of them, dressed in fatigues and body armor, wearing the sunglasses and bushy beards popular among the Special Forces. The only thing they can hear is the rustling of wheat stalks. They…