Oscar Rivero Screws The Poor

Oscar Rivero, charged onto Miami's affordable-housing scene four years ago with spectacular promises to build houses for poor families who have languished for years in crumbling and unsafe homes. He amassed an elaborate web of properties, pledging 24 units on the banks of a canal north of Miami; 54 in a midrise in Little Havana; 42 on a tree-lined corner of South Miami.

With his lofty plans and key connections to County Hall power brokers, Rivero quickly became a favored developer of local housing agencies, collecting nearly $3 million in public money. As an aide to Mayor Alex Penelas, Rivero hobnobbed with political elites and snared coveted spots on public boards.

But with the public funds that Oscar Rivero got for building houses for the poor, he is building an 11,000-square-foot Coral Gables estate that includes a wine cellar, library, billiard room, elevator, pool, spa and fountain -- plus a grand foyer, three stories high, fixed with Mediterranean columns and a spiral staircase. It is Oscar Rivero's dream house; and the only thing that he has built in the past four years.

The land where Rivero promised dozens of homes for the poor is still vacant, cordoned off by fences; eyesores in already distressed neighborhoods. Rivero hasn't delivered a single house even though he's held on to millions of dollars in public money -- while buying personal properties and an office for more than $4.9 million.

Rivero and his wife purchased five houses in the past two years in South Miami, plus the estate. One of Rivero's companies also bought a $1.2 million office building in Coral Gables where he would oversee his growing enterprises. Rivero is at the center of a scandal rocking county government and a community desperately in need of decent housing for the working poor. Miami-Dade prosecutors are poring over his financial records to track how he spent the public dollars. Rivero is scrambling to come up with cash -- he's put up three houses for sale and is borrowing from banks and family members, records and interviews show.

So far, Rivero has returned $1.5 million, about half of what he owes. But State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle says the return of money does not absolve Rivero and other developers if public funds were used fraudulently.

Community leaders and housing advocates are incensed. At rallies organized after The Miami Herald's recent investigation revealed a cadre of developers have not repaid the Housing Agency for houses never built, protesters have held up pictures of Rivero as emblematic of all that's gone wrong in public housing. ''The harm is so deep,'' said lawyer Jorge Luis Lopez, who was chief of staff to Penelas when Rivero was an aide in the office. "Sometimes people believe they are above the law. They're not -- and they need to be held accountable.''

During his college years, Rivero landed a $550-a-week job as a junior aide to Penelas, then a county commissioner -- a connection that would serve him for years and introduce him to the key County Hall figures now involved with Rivero in the unfolding housing scandal. Penelas declined to comment.

In 2000, Rivero himself landed in public office, becoming a board member at the Miami Parking Authority, run by longtime friend Art Noriega. The job for the first time gave Rivero the power to approve multimillion-dollar government contracts. As chairman, he would vote for contracts for business partner Alben Duffie's development company and a security firm that employs County Commission Chairman Joe Martinez as executive director, The Miami Herald found.

Gov. Jeb Bush selected Rivero to join then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in the back of the Versailles restaurant in Little Havana to dine with a small group that included legislators, lobbyists and activists to hash out issues affecting the Cuban community. He even was appointed to Miami's prestigious Orange Bowl Committee. He also landed a spot on the county's Housing Finance Authority, which provides tax-exempt bonds for affordable housing. His sponsor: newly elected County Commissioner Rebeca Sosa. ''They told me he was an attorney, a respected person,'' said Sosa, who said she cannot recall who recommended Rivero.

He began pushing to fund Ward Towers, an elderly housing complex being developed by the Miami-Dade Housing Agency and the nonprofit MDHA Development Corp., created a year earlier by county commissioners.
At the time, Housing Finance Authority Executive Director Patricia Braynon said she was puzzled at Rivero's insistence to release the cash. What she didn't know at the time was that two of Rivero's associates were on the receiving end of the deal, Braynon said. One was Rene Rodriguez, who had been appointed to lead the Housing Agency in 1996 under Penelas, then the county's influential mayor and Rivero's former boss. Rodriguez was not only the director of the Housing Agency, but president of the county-funded Development Corp. Rivero's other tie to the deal: Duffie, a longtime county employee and board member of the Development Corp. A year after he joined the Housing Finance Authority, Rivero left to become a member of the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, appointed by Jeb Bush.

With Rodriguez at the helm of the Housing Agency, Rivero quickly became a player at a department brimming with tens of millions of dollars from Miami-Dade's affordable housing construction fund. In 2002, Rivero created a company called Riverside Homes of South Florida and promised to build 24 houses along a canal in a poor neighborhood in the shadow of Interstate 95. He told the Housing Agency in his application for the money, "Riverside Homes is ready to proceed NOW!''

The first check: $500,000, dated Sept. 25, 2002. Records show Rodriguez ordered the payment even though the move violated Housing Agency policy, which prohibits advances to developers who have not started construction. At least two Housing Agency administrators say they objected, but Rodriguez wouldn't budge. Rodriguez and Rivero had been golfing buddies.

''The circles are very tight there, in government,'' said Lopez, Penelas' former chief of staff. "There's a line that often gets crossed.''
Money continued to flow to Riverside Homes, with the Housing Agency sending three more payments for a total of $360,000, including the most recent allotment of $96,000 in December. That money came just months after a Housing Agency staffer warned that no work had begun on Riverside Homes -- three years after the first $500,000 was paid. ''The project has not started,'' the Housing Agency's Alberto Diaz wrote.

Despite the setbacks with Riverside, another one of Rivero's companies -- this one called Rivers Development Group -- received $816,000 from the Housing Agency for the proposed 54-unit Las Rosas Apartments in Little Havana. Again, the money was paid before construction started. Again, the project never materialized.

In Rivero's four-year run with the Housing Agency, which continued even after Rodriguez resigned in mid-2004, he pitched at least five more projects and was approved for $4.9 million, records show. But the projects went nowhere.

While Rivero was wheeling and dealing, he was living in a Brickell Avenue condo, attending political bashes and teeing off at charity golf tournaments. In 2003, he met Yvette Aleman, from a prominent Cuban-American family. They married a year later and bought the land for their 11,000-square-foot estate.

At the same time, Rivero was turning to three new agencies for affordable housing money. One of them was the city of Miami, which paid $530,000 in 2005 for the Las Rosas project.

''It was a promising, feasible project,'' said Barbara Gomez-Rodriguez, who runs Miami's Department of Community Development. She is married to Rene Rodriguez from the county Housing Agency. Rivero also tapped the county's Office of Community and Economic Development and was awarded a total of $750,000 in 2003 and 2004 for Riverside Homes.

Finally, Rivero turned to the MDHA Development Corp., founded by Rene Rodriguez, with Duffie as a longtime board member. Rivero and Duffie had worked and invested together in earlier ventures, partnering in at least two development projects at Metrorail stations, The Miami Herald found.

Rivero convinced the Development Corp. to contribute $750,000 for a 46-unit project called Sunset Pointe Apartments in South Miami. As the dollars poured in for his affordable housing ventures, Rivero and his wife bought six houses between 2004 and 2006, including the estate property, records show.

The Housing Agency began demanding its money back. So did the city of Miami, which learned four months after Rivero received the $530,000 that he no longer could build the elderly rental complex because of rising construction costs. Finally, his failed projects were detailed in July by The Miami Herald, sparking a public outcry. Prosecutors subpoenaed Rivero's bank and land records to trace the money. (excerpt from Miami Herald)

Commentary: So another scumbag robs the taxpayers of Miami and gets away with it. Even if he returns all the money, he has been using that money without paying any interest on it for the past four years. Not to mention that all the poor people that were promised houses got screwed. This is the legacy of the prominent Cuban families. The same corruption and abuses that brought communism to Cuba. These corrupt abusers of the public trust belong in prison.

Update: Oscar Rivero was arrested a few days after this post. Now the question is whether he gets convicted and sent to prison for several years (like the shitbag deserves) or whether the fix is in and his expensive lawyers get him some bullshit probation deal. Fuck him and hopefully he will do hard time. The houses he promised to build for the poor never got built (not a single one). The only house that got built was the luxury home he paid for with the 4.9 million taxpayer dollars that he got from various government agencies.

Gay Love In Miami Corruption Scandal

Doral Pharmaceuticals millionaire Carlos De Cespedes does not mince words when he explains why he gave Jose ''Pepe'' Diaz a hard-to-define, $80,000-per-year job after Diaz's election to the Miami-Dade County Commission. ''I hired him so he won't steal from you and me,'' De Cespedes told The Miami Herald during an interview this week at the Coral Gables restaurant he owns, Chispa. The temptation for fraud is just too great, De Cespedes argued.

Commissioners get a $6,000 annual salary to oversee a $7 billion county budget. A ballot measure in September will ask voters to raise that salary to approximately $89,000. The ballot language will not include any mention of the $55,100 in annual cash perks that commissioners have added over the years, however. If the measure passes, commissioners' total annual compensation would increase to $144,000.

''Those fringe benefits are not outrageous, in fact, they are normal for a job at that level,'' De Cespedes said. "I might still hire him as a consultant for certain jobs'' In recent months, federal prosecutors have contacted him at least twice to discuss the well-known elected official on his payroll. De Cespedes said he has cooperated fully with investigators and has nothing to hide. Diaz could not be reached for comment Thursday evening. Both federal and county authorities are examining Diaz's ties to De Cespedes and prominent developer Sergio Pino. One focus is a fishing trip the three men took to Cancún, Mexico, aboard Pino's private jet in May 2004.

''Their theory is that I'm a pass-through for money from Sergio to Pepe,'' De Cespedes said. 'I tell them, "Subpoena my records, subpoena everything. There's nothing there.'' Diaz did not disclose the fishing trip on gift forms filed with the state ethics commission. But he did disclose his job with the De Cespedes-controlled venture capital firm Astri Group, a $206,000 loan in 2004 from another De Cespedes venture called CJDC Investments and a $19,795 ''bonus'' in 2004 from Kaufman Medical, also controlled by De Cespedes.

Diaz, refers to himself as ''director of corporate affairs'' for the Astri Group. De Cespedes said that he didn't know Diaz's exact title, saying it was not significant: "Pepe can call himself whatever he wants.'' Earlier this year, Diaz co-sponsored an amendment to an existing county ordinance that requires all county departments to give preference to local bidders when awarding contracts. Diaz's change extended the policy to the Public Health Trust, which oversees Jackson Memorial Hospital, a key client of De Cespedes' company Pharmed. All of Pharmed's $3.7 million in sales to Jackson in 2005 was in such medical-surgical supplies, Alonso said.

De Cespedes said he didn't know about Diaz's ordinance change until a reporter left a message about it on his voice mail last week. ''I applaud it. I have been trying to get them to keep their dollars local for a long time,'' De Cespedes said, referring to Jackson Memorial. But he didn't put Diaz up to changing the ordinance, De Cespedes said.

De Cespedes said he, Diaz and Pino spent most of their time together on Pino's boat in Cancún. ''What do three guys talk about on a boat? We talked about women, we talked about Cuba, we talked about politics,'' De Cespedes said. (Miami Herald- August 18, 2006)

Commentary: Why should we think that when one man gives another man an $80,000 a year gift (non-working job); it is because of political corruption? Why not look at the obvious? Maybe these two guys are just in love? Perhaps the reason they like to vacation together is in order to fuck each other up the ass?
Take a close look at their photos. One of them looks like Richard Simmons and the other one looks like he is fingering his bunghole (maybe he is constipated?). Since they both deny being corrupt, then let's give them the benefit of the doubt. If they are just gay for each other, then more power to them! Perhaps they will take their next vacation in Hawaii and get married? We Miamians need to be more supportive of our homosexuals in positions of power, and let them enjoy their lives. Vivan los grandes maricones!

Corrupt Building Code Officers

Thousands of home and business owners throughout Miami-Dade County have spent millions of dollars the past two years unwittingly having illegal work done on their homes. They're victims of a county contractor's licensing scam involving at least 178 companies, stolen computer pass codes and shoe boxes full of money for three county employees -- one of them now a fugitive. Officials have recovered $250,000 from the men.

County officials say the three workers in the Building Code Compliance Office created the fake licenses and sold them to companies that couldn't obtain them or didn't want to wait to be licensed. Contractors paid $2,000 to $15,000 for each fake license. After getting licensed and finding work, the companies received building permits and final inspections from the county. ''They made a mockery of the entire system,'' State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle said.

In Coral Gables, building and zoning officials planned today to stop construction on about 45 properties being worked on by 21 contractors.
Sweetwater, Miami Beach and several other municipalities were compiling lists. So far, Miami-Dade police have identified about 3,300 victims in unincorporated parts of the county. Detectives said there is no telling how many others have been affected in the county or in its 34 municipalities. In an average year, the Building Code Compliance Office issues about 1,800 contracting licenses.

The alleged mastermind of the scheme, Lazaro Herrera, a compliance office network administrator earning $89,400 a year, failed to turn himself in to police Thursday as promised, Miami-Dade Police Director Robert Parker said. The director said officers are watching Miami International Airport should Herrera try to leave the country.

Herrera, Joaquin Barros and Jerry Hernandez have been charged with racketeering, conspiracy, scheme to defraud, unlawful access of a computer network, official misconduct, grand theft and unlawful compensation. If convicted, they could face 20 years in prison. Barros, a building office contractor making $26,600 a year, and Hernandez, a department analyst making $61,600, turned themselves in to Miami-Dade police Thursday and are being held at the County Jail. Barros' bond has been set at $250,000; Hernandez's at $350,000.

According to Miami-Dade police, the sequence of events that led to the charges began in November when a woman named Maritza Bermudez was cited by the county for doing work without a contractor's license.
In March, she told Building Code Compliance Supervisor Jose Lezcano she had been issued the citation in error -- and bragged that she knew where she could buy a license, anyway.

Lezcano then checked a contractor's license number given to him by Bermudez that wasn't hers. He noted that it was issued in only five days without a host of requirements like proof of insurance and a credit check, according to a police affidavit. Most licenses take four to six weeks. Miami-Dade police were notified and set up visual surveillance. A search of their homes turned up about $250,000 in cash, much of it in boxes throughout Herrera's home. Some $60,000 was found in shoe boxes owned by Hernandez, police said. (Miami Herald, Aug.18, 2006)

Corrupt GSA Administrator Arrested

Police arrested a high-ranking city of Miami employee today after an undercover sting operation caught him accepting a $1,000 bribe on videotape at a Starbucks coffee shop across the street from the Miami-Dade Courthouse. Police say Miguel Angel Mejia, employed by Miami's General Services Administration, tried to shake down a contractor who had received an $11,500 air conditioning installation job from the city.

The contractor didn't want to pay the bribe, and called police. The contractor then took part in the sting operation, meeting Mejia at the Starbucks in March, police said. Police say Mejia, who was still in custody, has already confessed to his crime. Mejia was the acting superintendent of the GSA's Property and Maintenance Division.

On prosecutors' surveillance video shot at the Starbucks, Mejia and Patrick Kerney -- owner of Kerney and Associates, Inc., the contractor hired for the air conditioning work -- can be seen sipping coffee and chatting at an outdoor table. As narrated by prosecutors, Kerney is then seen pulling out a large wad of cash from one of his pockets and handing it to Mejia, who nonchalantly reaches across the table and accepts it.

Mejia faces one count of unlawful compensation, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. ''He wanted to put that money -- your money, taxpayer dollars -- in his greedy little hands,'' Miami--Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said.

Corrupt Public Housing Authority

The Miami-Dade grand jury issued a report Friday calling the county's Housing Agency ''an utter and complete disaster,'' and condemning what it called ''cronyism, corruption'' and "gross mismanagement.'' The jurors commended The Miami Herald for its series House of Lies, an investigation that found the Housing Agency had awarded millions of dollars to developers who over a period of years had failed to build any affordable homes. The investigation also found that Housing Agency officials misused taxpayer money and diverted $5 million to pay for a new headquarters, complete with a $287,000 statue.

''As jurors, we, too, were disgusted and embarrassed by the misfeasance and gross mismanagement of many of our public servants,'' the grand jury wrote. The report, titled House of Cards: Built on Mismanagement and Cronyism, said that some Housing Agency employees 'seemed more interested in greasing their friends' palms by funding inept, nonperforming entities than being concerned with the goals of assisting our neediest citizens.'' The jurors also said that they had intended to ask county officials to fire all of the top management of the Housing Agency. But County Manager George Burgess, after reading just half of The Miami Herald's series, removed seven Housing Agency officials last week.

Burgess said Friday he had mounted a national search for a new director for the troubled agency and expected more staff changes. Several Housing Agency programs have already been moved to other departments. ''We just move forward and we fix the problems,'' he said. "Quite frankly I think it's an opportunity to make it better than it was, an opportunity to just cleanse.''

The grand jury noted that an agency program for helping low-income families afford their first home was also rife with problems. The program provides buyers who have obtained a mortgage for 80 percent of the cost of a home to finance the remaining 20 percent at a cheaper, subsidized rate.
''Senior administrators within the Miami-Dade Housing Agency routinely approved mortgage loan applications for ineligible homeowners who either made too much money to qualify or were not first-time home buyers,'' the report said.

Miami-Dade Police Department's office of public corruption, the State Attorney's Office and the county's inspector general are all investigating the Housing Agency. ''The outrage and frustration that the grand jury expressed over cronyism is something I think everybody in the community feels,'' said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle.
The term of the current grand jury, which began nine months ago, is over. But Fernández Rundle said her office would help the next grand jury continue to look into management problems in the Housing Agency. She also said her office was moving forward with the criminal investigation.
Inspector General Chris Mazzella said he expected to issue a report in the next two weeks. ''That report will focus on a significant program and should impact many other programs in the Housing Agency,'' he said Friday. "Every day, we find something new.'' Check out the Miami Herald investigative report!

FIU violates Lobbyist Laws

Florida International University has paid a high-powered lobbyist as a full-time employee for six years, even as he was representing 30 additional clients, including two other local universities, in front of the Legislature.
The arrangement appears to violate a 1974 law that forbids universities from using taxpayer dollars to pay outside lobbyists. FIU officials said they discovered the problem involving longtime lobbyist Fausto B. Gomez last month and are researching how to fix it.

The state ethics commission could subject both the school and the lobbyist to a two-year ban on lobbying the governor and the Legislature, which would be a crippling blow at a time when FIU attempts to build a new medical school. ''We're talking about an error here,'' said FIU Provost Ron Berkman. "We're not talking about any attempt to deceive.'' FIU has spent $517,820.88 in taxpayer dollars since 2000 on Gomez, according to FIU records.

Most of the time, Gomez was officially listed as a ''practitioner in residence,'' according to a letter that served as his contract. Gomez's responsibilities included ''guest lectures in political science and/or public administration courses, possible seminars and workshops for students, faculty or staff,'' the contract said. His primary job, though, was advising FIU's administration on dealing with state and local government issues.
Gomez's contracts were signed by former Provost Mark Rosenberg and authorized by President Modesto ''Mitch'' Maidique, according to a 2001 letter written by Rosenberg. In October 2005, Rosenberg left to be the chancellor of the entire state university system, which includes 11 universities.

''Clearly, I didn't know the rules and I'm very unhappy about this,'' Rosenberg said this week. Rosenberg said he didn't know if Gomez ever lectured during his time as provost. His successor, Berkman, says Gomez may have given some lectures, and perhaps even taught a class, but FIU officials could not find records to indicate when or where. Gomez, who earned a bachelor's degree in political science from FIU in 1977, declined to comment, referring all questions to university administrators.

His clients include Miami-Dade County, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, Barry University and Carlos Albizu University, according to a recent compensation report filed with the state. The report says Gomez and his partner, Manuel Reyes, earned between $250,000 and $499,999 from their lobbying clients during the first three months of 2006.

Marcos Perez, FIU's vice president for administration, discovered that the arrangement ''may not be in compliance'' with the state law, according to a draft of a July 14 letter addressed to Gomez. The letter has not yet been sent because Perez is on vacation. The law -- passed in 1974 and toughened in 1993 -- prohibits state agencies, including universities, from using tax money on outside contracts to lobby the Legislature or the governor. Universities can legally pay lobbyists with money from their charitable foundations, though.

They also can use full-time employees to lobby, but Perez determined that Gomez should not have been considered a full-time employee because he has so many other lobbying clients. ''Your list of clients makes me believe that it is unlikely that you are fulfilling your duties as a full-time practitioner in residence,'' Perez wrote.

As Perez reviewed arrangements with six other school lobbyists, he found the school had paid $24,500 to the consulting firm of former FIU provost James Mau, also a registered lobbyist. Mau could not be reached for comment. The issues with Gomez were discovered just as he began making plans for what he deemed ''one of the most significant legislative sessions in FIU's history,'' according to a July 10 e-mail he sent to Perez. He wrote that the meeting should be held soon ``to afford us time to impact and influence executive and legislative contests.'' It is illegal in Florida for state employees to participate in elections while they are on the job.