Private detective Joe Carillo is headed to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office this afternoon so they can question him about his investigation of the two women collecting absentee ballots in Hialeah, who were later detained and stopped by police.
But Carillo, 57, said he knows he is stepping into a trap and that his sources have told him the state attorney is going to serve him with a subpoena to learn who he is working for.
And he ain’t gonna cooperate. In fact, when he leaves the SAO, he is heading to the Miami FBI field office, he said, to have them investigate the spoof phone call he got from a number tied to Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez-Rundle and after which all his email and social media accounts were hacked. He said when he called the number back, he got a recording stating it was KFR’s line and giving a forwarding number — to her county office.
Ladra called the number he gave me and Fernandez-Rundle answered the phone.
“If he just cooperates with the police officers and everyone who is coming in today, that is all we are looking for,” she told me, adding that she did not know why gypsy conartist Vanessa Brito, who is trying to drape this AB flag around her to cleanse herself of all the wrongdoing she’s done — but who worked on the Hialeah hoodlums AB campaigns last year and is working with Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador on the Norman Braman Bunch PAC — also had been called in to talk to investigators. Who is she kidding? Ladra has to give Kathy her Vanessa dosier.
And wait just one sugar-picking minute — why is Carillo being grilled before the boleteras who were caught are arrested? Isn’t this a misdirection of our SAO resources? Yeah, I want to know who hired Carillo. But I want to know who hired Daisy Cabrera and Matilde Martinez, the two women caught collecting ballots, even more.
I mentioned that the state attorney ought to recuse herself because of her ties to Al Lorenzo, who works on her re-election campaign, and Lorenzo’s ties to Cabrera, one of the boleteras caught red-handed with more than a dozen absentee ballots in her possession last week. Fernandez-Rundle said she had not read my blog entry yet — and I believe her because she was exceedingly nice and polite.
“I don’t know what I have here. I only know that we asked Joe to come in because we want to know who he was working for when he was following these women,” Fernandez-Rundle told me.
She’s not the only one. People with the Gimenez campaign want to know and so do the people in Hialeah and, I gotta admit, Ladra wants to know, too. I’ve heard all kinds of scenarios from that it was the Hialeah Fire Union, who has been as hot against AB fraud as Ladra, to former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez to Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi, who Carillo worked for once before after a city election in Hialeah, investigating former Councilman Alex Morales and others.
He says it ain’t Pizzi.
“He’s a scumbag. I don’t like Michael Pizzi. Michael Pizzi tried to set me up with the feds.”
But Carillo still won’t tell me who did hire him. Will he tell the prosecutors?
Fat chance.
“I have nothing to say to them. I’m going to the FBI,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter why I did it. I’m not going to tell anyone why or who or when or who I work for. Forty percent of the work I do is pro bono. I’m not saying that this is pro bono,” Carillo told me, hinting that he does indeed work for someone. The P.I. had said earlier that he had received a tip from someone he had talked to in earlier AB sting operations after that person got a business card from Cabrera that said on the back: “Call me when your ballot arrives. I work every election.” And that he followed up out of a sense of duty and mission.
He hates that it led back to Gimenez, who he went to school with at Christopher Columbus High.
“The problem is this woman led me to him,” Carillo told me.
He also hates that he is being questioned and that the SAO thinks it’s going to spring the subpoena on him as a surprise. “I was called by the lead detective on the case while I was in Texas,” he said, referring to a trip he made see his son, who is in military service. “But I’ve been doing this for 27 years and I have sources like you do. And I have been told I am going to be served with a subpoena and they’re going to ask me who I work for.”
He also heard that a slew of other private detectives were hired over the weekend “to find out who I am working for.” At least the local elections are good for the private security and investigations economy.
Carillo says he thinks the spoof call he got Sunday night came from one of them, using a spoof application routed through Fernandez-Rundle’s phone. “I think it was other private investigators working for some candidate or other.”
But he says it is a serious thing because his information — including confidential emails and client files — is protected.
“I’m upset now because it’s personal. I feel threatened. I have children and grandchildren and I have done nothing wrong,” an agitated Carillo told me about an hour before he met with investigators at the state attorneys office.
“And now I am going after whoever did this — I don’t care who it turns out to be.”
Hmmmm. I am liking this guy more and more. Heading to the SAO office now.
PI on the Hialeah ABs could be grilled by SAO added by Ladra on
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