​Silently judging other people is one of my top ten favorite activities of all time, but I was still a bit nervous when I found out I'd been called for the very first time to the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building to serve my civic duty of jury service.

Well, yesterday I showed up, sat in that big jury pool room, and eventually got called to serve on a jury panel for a DUI case. I didn't make the final cut for the jury, but I did learn quite a bit during the day. Yes, I know you're yawning, but trust me, they were exciting things about Gloria Estefan and Molotov cocktails!
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via Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida

Judge Mindy Glazer

​When Alex de Gasperi resigned last month as board director of Imperial House, a luxury Miami Beach tower, he didn't leave quietly. Instead, he circulated a four-page letter lambasting another high-profile resident: Circuit Court Judge Mindy Glazer.

De Gasperi says Glazer damaged a door by kicking it and later intimidated the board into backing an insurance deal that paid her husband, David Gaynor, thousands in commission. The accusation comes just a week after revelations that Gaynor paid the state $50,000 for wrongly claiming Homestead tax exemptions on two condos.
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photo by Tim Elfrink

Yep, that's a synagogue made of guns and bullets.

​As we wandered through the Ice Palace in Wynwood this morning at the Pulse fair, we were drawn from across the hall by a gleaming blue and gold replica mosque. Hey, that's beautiful, we thought, wandering closer. Then, as we drew near, we realized, Hey, that mosque is made of fucking guns!

That's the vision of Al Farrow at work, an artist and engineer who takes old weapons turns them into lovely miniature houses of worship. It's an incendiary enough idea that his website recently crashed after a right-wing blogger in Holland posted photos of his work. "The discussion that started was amazing," Farrow tells Riptide. More >>

FPL "hid" a document to avoid liability in a serious accident, according to a Miami-Dade judge

​For a company that's in the business of providing light, FPL apparently likes to keep some things in the dark.

Last month a jury found Florida Power & Light partly responsible for an accident at the Port of Miami in 2004 that left longshoreman Willie Walker crippled. Walker's attorneys say FPL "stonewalled" proceedings by hiding a key document for years while urging the court to toss the lawsuit.

"This was either willful misconduct or willful blindness," says Jason Margulies, one of Walker's lawyers. "We were able to discover straight out fraud by FPL."
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via Miami-Dade Corrections

Jorge Uscamayta was arrested along with more than 20 other baggage handlers yesterday.

​How's this for a truly bizarre crime connection? Last night, Miami-Dade police announced the arrests of more than 20 curbside baggage handlers at MIA on charges that they'd taken cash bribes. One of those "skycaps" is 62-year-old Jorge Uscamayta.

If that name sounds familiar, it's because he's evidently the same Jorge Uscamayta who was held hostage at gunpoint two months ago while his son -- a teller at the Coral Gables Bank of America -- was forced to strap a bomb on his chest and extract $100,000 for a gang of bank robbers. Whaaa?

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​When the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Courthouse finally opened in late 2007, the Magic City waxed rhapsodic: "Beautiful" and "elegant," enthused one judge; "(People) will say, 'That's Miami!" exclaimed another. Even this publication swooned, naming the glass behemoth "Best New Building" and praising the "crystal ship .. plowing through waves" of grass.

All that architectural wonder didn't come cheap, though: taxpayers footed a cool $169 million tab. So how come less than two years later, the place is already under repair?

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​Miguel Rodriguez and his wife, Barbara, were waiting for some barbecue after work on a Friday afternoon late last year when all hell broke loose inside People's Bar-B-Que in Overtown.

A screaming man dressed head to toe in black charged the busy take-out counter, wielding a handgun sideways, gangsta-style. Rodriguez, a Miami-Dade firefighter and former cop, was so terrified he felt chest pains. Other patrons hit the floor and shrieked. Rodriguez had one last thought as he threw his hands in the air: I'm going to get shot.

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A real-life episode of Burn Notice essentially played out this weekend at a Miami Beach hotel, complete with a mysterious shooting death, a hastily evacuated foreign head of state, a deathly bad odor, and a hazmat team.

It's not clear whether Bruce Campbell was involved -- but frankly, we're not ready to rule it out considering how little information has emerged to clear up what in hell was going on at the Miami Beach Resort & Spa.

The trouble began around 10 p.m. Saturday, according to the Miami Herald, when a T-shirt-clad man drenched in blood called police to report his friend had just been shot on the 11th floor.

When the cops got off the elevator, they were hit with an odor so horrific they fled back to the lobby and called a hazmat team.

Just to make things more interesting, the prime minister of Belize was at that very moment delivering a keynote speech to a packed room of dinner guests -- right next door to a rowdy wedding reception in the adjacent banquet room. Oy!
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As we reported in a January investigation, toxic Chinese drywall is forcing thousands around Florida to make an impossible choice between abandoning brand new homes or exposing their families to dangerous fumes.

​The state continues to drag its feet, protecting politically connected builders. The federal government still hasn't decided how to best remedy the problems. And homeowners' best hope lies in the courts -- which have a mighty hard time reaching Chinese companies.

Today, at last, came a bit of good news. For the first time in the nation, a Miami judge this morning certified a class action lawsuit against distributors and manufacturers of the toxic drywall.

The class action suit is limited to a single subdivision in Homestead, but lawyers say the judge's decision could be an important precedent for thousands of other victims.

"Now that we've established the precedent that there is a defective product with a common source, we can start to expand on the victory," says Victor Diaz, the lawyer representing the Homestead couple who brought the lawsuit.

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Nothing makes a bleary, rain-drenched Wednesday afternoon a little more bearable quite like some good ol' schadenfreude.

photo by Averette

Creating off-shore tax havens lags just behind golf among Fisher Island's most popular leisure-time activities.

​So Riptide is grateful to 77-year-old Mauricio Cohen Assor and his 46-year-old son, Leon Cohen Levy, for stepping up to the plate.

Assor and Levy -- French nationals born in Algeria and Morocco, respectively -- amassed a tidy fortune for themselves by building and reselling hotels.

They bought a $20 million Fisher Island condo, a $26 million bayfront home in Miami Beach, and $55 million in other South Beach property. They spent $188,000 on a Bentley, $67,000 on a Dodge Viper, and $700,000 on Rolls Royce Phantom, a Porsche Carrera GT, a Ferrari Testarossa, a BMW Z8 and other rides.

They even bought a helicopter! (For $1.2 million, in case you're in the market).

Unfortunately, according to the IRS, they also hid $45 million in fake businesses scattered around the globe, then coached witnesses to lie under oath and falsely filed court documents claiming they had almost no assets.

The pair were indicted for fraud today. Yeah, they're in trouble.

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