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Miami Judge Threatens Major Mortgage Company Lawyers With Criminal Charges for Hiding Documents

By Jerry IannelliDecember 14, 2017

Ditech, one of America’s largest home-loan companies, achieved fame in the 1990s with TV commercials that showed its competitors complaining they had “lost another loan to Ditech.” The company largely vanished during the 2008 housing crisis but has since rebounded and remains one of the largest mortgage service firms in America. It brings in revenues in excess of $1 billion per year and handles thousands of home-foreclosure cases annually.

Will Marco Rubio Vote to Cut Millionaires’ Taxes After GOP Gives Him a Big Ol’ Middle Finger? UPDATED

By Tim ElfrinkDecember 14, 2017

Sen. Marco Rubio has gleefully pushed the GOP tax bill even though analysts say it will do nothing for Miami’s middle and working classes while giving huge tax breaks to millionaires in Brickell. But Rubio has tried to put some gloss on that plutocrat’s dream package by insisting that his colleagues slightly increase the corporate tax to pay for tax breaks for 9 million low-income families with children.

Miami Man in Jail for Weed Wins $730K After Losing Kidney

By Jerry IannelliDecember 13, 2017

Pascual Diaz-Plasencia was arrested on misdemeanor drug possession charges June 29, 2012, after police caught him with less than 20 grams of marijuana. Diaz-Plasencia had recently undergone a kidney transplant and had to take a set of pills twice daily to ensure his body didn’t reject the organ.

Florida Men Who Filmed Themselves Abusing Sharks Finally Charged With Crimes

By Jerry IannelliDecember 13, 2017

This past July, a group of young Florida bros filmed themselves dragging a live shark behind a boat until the poor thing disintegrated into a bloody pulp. The crew of numbskulls then sent the clip to Miami’s infamous shark hunter, Mark “the Shark” Quartiano, because they thought the famed fisherman would find the footage entertaining.

FPL Gets to Charge Customers $130 Million to Clean Up Its Environmental Damage

By Jerry IannelliDecember 12, 2017

Mention the cooling canals at Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station around a local environmentalist, and you’ll likely get to watch that activist’s face turn all shades of red and purple. Florida Power & Light owns the plant in South Miami-Dade, and evidence strongly suggests FPL has known for decades that the plant’s canals were leaking saltwater into the Biscayne Aquifer, Miami’s largest source of drinking water.

Miami New Times‘ Ten Most-Read Sports Stories of 2017

By Miami New Times staffDecember 12, 2017

All in all, 2017 was not a glorious sports year in South Florida. The Marlins and Panthers were awful, the Heat needed a second-half surge to go from dreadful to mediocre, and the less said about this season’s Dolphins squad the better. The only good news comes from Coral Gables,…

Miami Beach Police Hires New Captain of Detectives Facing Gender-Discrimination Lawsuit in New York

By Brittany ShammasDecember 11, 2017

In August, a female police officer with the tiny Muttontown, New York police department sued the village and its police chief because she said she’d faced gender discrimination on the job. Jennifer Lavin’s suit alleged that after she was injured while handcuffing an emotionally disturbed person, Chief Phil Pulaski refused to grant her line-of-duty benefits or light duty and blamed her pregnancy for her pain.

The Ten Weirdest, Worst Things We Saw During Art Basel 2017 (NSFW)

By Jerry IannelliDecember 11, 2017

Art Basel teaches you that rich people are exceedingly weird. They’re the people you see walking around San Francisco or Manhattan in Balenciaga shoes, the folks who seem really normal and put together and content to be driving their steel-gray Mercedes sedans from venture-capital pitch to venture-capital pitch.

Powerful Family of Miami Judge Owns Illegal Frat-House Ring Near UM, Neighbors Say

By Jerry IannelliDecember 11, 2017

On Saturday, November 11, 65,000 delirious fans packed Hard Rock Stadium for the University of Miami’s biggest home game in years against the hated Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Bars swelled with orange-and-green-clad crowds, and closer to UM’s campus, raucous house parties erupted. One of the largest bacchanals was at a residential home in the nearby neighborhood of Glenvar Heights, where partiers arrived by the busload.

The Five Dumbest Things Miami Democrats Did This Year

By Jerry IannelliDecember 10, 2017

Florida Democrats are, for the most part, huge failures. Democrats outnumber Republicans in both Miami-Dade County and in the state as a whole — but they’re so terrible at messaging that local and state politics are dominated by GOP wackadoodles. During Donald Trump’s first year in office, one would think…

Miami New Times‘ Ten Most-Read Long-Form Stories of 2017

By Miami New Times staffDecember 8, 2017

This year, Miami New Times exposed child molestation allegations against the founder of Florida’s largest megachurch and domestic violence charges against one of Miami’s most recognizable reality TV stars. We told the tale of the worst Florida Keys murder in three decades and got inside a booming purple drank ring tied to the biggest names in hip-hop. Our writers investigated an only-in-Miami invention patent marketing scheme and the handful of politically tied companies set to make a fortune off medical marijuana. And millions of readers came along for the ride.

Arrests of Undocumented Florida Immigrants Have Spiked by 75 Percent Under Trump

By Jerry IannelliDecember 8, 2017

It wasn’t just media hype: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents really did ramp up their enforcement efforts during Donald Trump’s first year in office. According to year-end figures ICE released yesterday, the agency arrested 6,192 immigrants in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands this year — a 75 percent jump from last year, in which only 3,524 people were apprehended.