“I’ll wear a flower in my hair or something,” Karen Raley says chirpily, “because you’ll never recognize me from my mug shot!” She sits in a back booth at Roasters’ n Toasters in Aventura. It’s her favorite diner, a low-key joint where the bagels are cheap. She doesn’t seem to…
In an effort dubbed “Operation Pill Nation,” federal and local authorities executed the largest crack down on pill mills in South Florida to date. South Florida has become a hotbed of shady pain clinics dolling out prescriptions for powerful and addictive pain killers, and while most of these clinics are…
All Urania Lot wanted was for her 18-year-old son to eat his sandwich in the dining room. When he refused to quit chomping in the living room, the 60-year-old Stock Island mom grabbed a hammer. And when threats of smashing the TV to bits didn’t work either, Lot wailed on…
Despite a triumphant concert in Miami and a Grammy win within the last few months, Buju Banton’s dark days are not behind him. After an initial trial on drug charges was declared a mistrial, Banton has been found guilty of conspiring to set up a Florida cocaine deal back in…
Joel Paul Williams is the fire starter, allegedly. The 33-year-old homeless man has been charged in connection with two of the four fires that have struck abandoned buildings in the Collins Park area of Miami Beach in the past few days. Though, investigators believe he may be behind as many…
Organized crime is still alive in Miami, but after a crack down today not so well. Thirteen people throughout South Florida have been arrested and charged with ties to an organized crime syndicate. The arrests were part of a larger crackdown on a group called the Armenian Power gang. 100…
Former North Miami Beach public services director Martin King was arrested today and charged with 41 felony counts of money laundering for stealing millions in taxpayer dollars with fake work orders for sewer projects. After investigators looked into how $2.2 million in projects were unaccounted for, King admitted that he…
A truly strange murder case sprouted along I-95 yesterday when rescuers — who had just saved a man and a boy suffering from chemical fume exposure in a pesticide truck — found a corpse in a bag stuffed between containers of hazardous chemicals in the back.The truck belongs to a…
Bob “Kooch” Kuechenberg, a Miami Dolphins legend who played for the unbeaten ’72 team and racked up six Pro Bowl selections, has been busted for a DUI. The arrest comes after he side swiped another vehicle while trying to make a lane change on a stretch of I-95 in Broward…
For those of you all alone today, just remember it could always be worse. Your Valentine could be a psycho who threatens to cut off your head after strangling you with a belt. That’s basically what happened in Key Largo yesterday, and now 33-year-old Nathan Hemby sits behind bars…
City of Miami police officers have shot and killed another suspect — the seventh killed by MPD cops since last summer. The latest shooting happened last night around 11 p.m. at North Miami Avenue and 75th Street, police sources tell Riptide, and left another man in critical condition.Police are declining…
Juan Carlos Rodriguez, the Miami-Dade police officer accused of fondling two teenage girls during a traffic stop, will have to rustle up a little less cash to head home for house arrest before his trial. A judge has reduced Rodriguez’s bond from $150,000 to $80,000…
Thirty-two-year-old Carlos Usatorres, a former full-time gym teacher at Miami Springs Middle School, was arrested last December on charges that he was having repeated sexual encounters in his office with a 13-year-old female student. The arrest has been kept quiet until now, but the attorney for the girl’s family is…
An injured man probably had mixed feelings when cops showed up at his house early this morning. On one hand, the man had several injuries and desperately needed medical attention. On the other hand, he was running a marijuana grow house that police discovered when they came to assist him…
Beware of what you see here in the Magic City: very little is real. The boobs? Nope. Those lips? Collagen-enhanced. Even that sweet Lamborghini is just a rental. We all know you ended up with the Datsun after your divorce.So it might not come as a shock that what little…
I’d always believed the old wives’ tale that journalists get tossed out of jury pools quicker than Liz Lemon in Princess Leia drag, so I almost dropped my book when Judge Nushin Sayfie called my name on Monday. Along with five other lucky citizens, I’d been asked to sit in…
When Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies responded to an alarm at an appliance shop in Marathon late last night, they expected to find the usual: a burglary in progress or perhaps a malfunctioning security system. Instead, the cops say they walked in through an unlocked side door to find Kenneth White,…
Anyone who has ever insured anything — a car, a house, or, if you’re J.Lo, a sumptuously rotund rump — knows that insurance companies are about as trustworthy as automobile salesmen: You had better read the fine print lest the deal come back to kick you in the junk. As…
The Miami-Dade Police Department has arrested one of their own for allegedly molesting numerous young women while on the job. 24-year-old officer Juan Carlos Rodriguez was charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation stemming form an incident in which he fondled two teenage girls during a traffic stop…
Burn Notice star Jeffrey Donovan has pleaded guilty to reckless driving and will avoid DUI charges stemming from an incident in which he almost hit a police car on Miami Beach in 2009, reports TMZ. The deal with prosecutors will ensure that the actor doesn’t face any jail time. …
Malcolm Riddell, a 58-year-old married resident of Sarasota, never got around to password protecting his wireless router. That led to the FBI knocking on his door, holding him up against a wall, and searching his computer for images of child porn according to The Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Riddell wasn’t some pervert…
”Embattled” isn’t nearly a strong enough adjective for Miami Police jefe Miguel Exposito these days, so we’ll just have to invent a new one: em-blitzkrieged. Because it’s only Tuesday and Exposito’s job security this week looks as tenuous as Hosni Mubarak’s.Just since Friday, these things have happened: Another Miami cop…
