Dubious Achievers - Florida Newsmakers of the Year
• SCOTT ROTHSTEIN
Attorney, Fort Lauderdale
 [Photo: Miami Herald] |
Scott Rothstein's $1.2-billion fraud actually disintegrated in late 2009, when he briefly fled to Morocco before returning to face the music. In 2010, he got a 50-year sentence, now being served in protective custody in parts unknown. The 48-year-old got gaudily rich thanks to a fraud involving phony settlements. And what class: "I don't want the feds to f------ have it. It's not their money. They didn't steal it. I did it," he said, according to the Sun-Sentinel's transcript of a conversation Rothstein had while working as a fed informer. The guy he was trying to sting, Roberto Settineri, a Miami Beach wine seller with alleged ties to a Sicilian crime family, in fact got stung and wound up sentenced to four years. The fallout continues from the implosion of Rothstein's 70-lawyer firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, as defrauded investors and authorities go after whomever they can.
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Volunteer/Non-Profit Arts/Entertainment Dubious Achievers |
• DAVID BROOKS
Founder, Point Blank Solutions
Pompano Beach
 [Photo: Howard Schnapp] |
David H. Brooks, 55, who led what's now Point Blank Solutions, was convicted in 2010 of looting his company to pay for luxury cars, racehorses, family trips, his wife's plastic surgery and hookers for employees. (If the prostitutes made workers more productive, it was argued, they were a legitimate expense.) The formal charges included insider trading and fraud. Brooks and his chief operating officer, Sandra Hatfield, 56, were convicted after an eight-month New York trial that was a spectacle with allegations of shenanigans in the jury room and the anxiety-suffering Brooks being smuggled pills in a pen in court. "The trial of the century in the United States — hands down, don't even try to compare it with anything else," said The Atlantic.
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Volunteer/Non-Profit Arts/Entertainment Dubious Achievers |
• JIM GREER
Former state GOP leader
 [Photo: AP] |
Party Pooper
Jim Greer, 48, Charlie Crist's choice to chair the Republican Party of Florida, lived well off the party in his three years in charge. It even picked up the tab for a trip to Vegas to see Wayne Newton. He wound up charged with money laundering, theft and fraud for allegedly channeling a cut of donations to his side company.
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Volunteer/Non-Profit Arts/Entertainment Dubious Achievers |
• WAYNE MCLEOD
Investment adviser, Jacksonville
Target: Fed Workers
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Volunteer/Non-Profit Arts/Entertainment Dubious Achievers |
• LEWIS FREEMAN
Attorney/forensic accountant
Miami
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A guy usually called in to fix such messes wound up creating one himself. Lewis B. Freeman, whom Florida Trend called "Cleanup Man" in a 2001 piece, specialized in fiduciary assignments and receiverships. "I'm either a physician or a mortician," he told us. He also had regular clients including coaches Jimmy Johnson and Butch Davis and employed for a time the former head of the SEC in Miami. In 2010, Freeman was charged with stealing $2.6 million from clients. He would have recognized the pattern: An upright guy — University of Miami donor, supporter of charitable causes — who finds his business short and "borrows" from accounts to make ends meet. Miami's elite wrote letters in the hundreds to beg the judge to have mercy. Freeman was sentenced to almost 8½ years.
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Education Science/Innovation Environment CRITTERS Sports |
Volunteer/Non-Profit Arts/Entertainment Dubious Achievers |
• PAUL HAWKES
1st District Court of Appeal judge
North Florida
 Judge Paul Hawkes lobbied lawmakers for the $48.8-million courthouse, which includes kitchens for each judge and big-screen TVs. [Photo: Ray Stanyard] |
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Voters in November decided to retain Judge Paul Hawkes, a Jeb Bush appointee and at the time chief judge of the appellate district that includes much of north Florida. Voters kept alive the judiciary's unbroken string of retention victories despite revelations that the former GOP legislator was the driving lobbying force for his district's new, $48.8-million "Taj Mahal" courthouse, including big-screen TVs and individual kitchens for each judge. "I don't think it's extravagant," Hawkes told the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. Hawkes has since stepped down as chief judge.
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Education Science/Innovation Environment CRITTERS Sports |
Volunteer/Non-Profit Arts/Entertainment Dubious Achievers |
• LEE FARKAS
Taylor Bean & Whitaker, Ocala
 [Photo: Bruce Ackerman/Ocean Star Banner] |
Lee Farkas took mortgage company Taylor Bean & Whitaker from small beans to one of the nation's largest mortgage players not owned by a bank. It closed in 2009 amid allegations of a $1.9-billion fraud that sank Alabama-based Colonial Bank, one of the 10 largest banks in Florida by market share and Taylor Bean's largest lender. Farkas, 57, in 2010 was arrested on bank and securities fraud charges for allegedly trying to hide losses from financial firms and the government.
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Business Politics Military |
Education Science/Innovation Environment CRITTERS Sports |
Volunteer/Non-Profit Arts/Entertainment Dubious Achievers |