Even before the story in Thursday’s Miami Herald has her admitting that she went to see Deisy Cabrera the same day the boletera was popped by the Miami-Dade Police public corruption unit, Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian “I’ll Notarize That” Casals-Muñoz was up to her elbows in the absentee ballot fraud rampant in the City of Progress for years.
Cabrera has worked with her campaigns before and with all her allies. And Casals-Muñoz supposedly just happened upon Cabrera on the street when five undercover detectives stopped her a block from the Hialeah campaign office of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, which the councilwoman was running for him. It’s strange she told El Nuevo Herald reporter Enrique Flor that she went over there because she thought there was an accident. She told Ladra, when I ran into her at the Starbuck’s on 4th Avenue, that she and Jorge Gonzalez — her mysterious bodyguard type, inherited from former Sen. Rudy Garcia‘s doomed bid for Hialeah mayor, who seems to have no other job but to shadow the councilwoman — just happened to drive by at the same time. She changed the story for Flor, who she told she “walked to the scene,” according to the story, but listen to how she left.
“Deisy was on the sidewalk. We thought she had had an accident and we went there to make sure she was all right,” Casals-Muñoz is quoted as saying. “A county detective told me that they were doing an investigation and that I had to leave, that it wasn’t an accident and that everything was all right. So I got in the car and left.”
She got in the car and left? Didn’t she just say she walked from the office a half block away?
This is why police need to question these people over and over again. Lies are not that hard to catch.
Note to detective: And you didn’t think that was a detail to write into the report? That the councilwoman stopped by and showed concern? Note to prosecutors: Get their phone records. Ladra will bet her favorite bone that Cabrera made a frantic phone call as soon as she was stopped and right before the councilwoman arrived.
Casals-Muñoz — who has been under a cloud before, since she prepared questionable mortgage documents for her brother in law, former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina — told Flor that Cabrera, who was caught with 19 ballots one day and 12 on another, was not a boletera but a “community activist” who brings “to my attention the concerns of residents.” Hmmmmm. Interesting. So, all year long, Cabrera brings you the concerns of residents who she then goes back to at election time to collect their ballots, after she has gained their trust as liaison to you? And for this, you do not pay her?
“As far as I know, Deisy is not being paid,” Casals-Muñoz said, adding that she has not been interviewed about the case (Note to investigators: What on Earth are you doing?)
“I don’t know who pays her and who doesn’t. She has supported me as a volunteer, not as an employee,” the councilwoman added, admitting publicly that Cabrera was a volunteer for the Gimenez campaign, something the mayor refused to do before the election, and saying that she “offered my unconditional help to Gimenez campaign.”
Which, naturally, included her friend Deisy, who she is so close to that — even though she is an elected official with a reputation to protect — she felt the dire need to go and comfort her the night she was popped by the cops.
Okay, so she has not paid Deisy, she says, and we have not found Cabrera on Casals-Muñoz campaign finance reports — not that it means anything since she has bagmen (read: Gonzalez et al) who pay the boleteras in soft money.
Anyway, let’s see who has paid Deisy and how they are related to Casals-Muñoz. She herself says Cabrera worked for Manny Diaz, Jr., the alleged intended beneficiary of the AB bundling who the councilwoman and the Ballot Bandidos endorsed. Cabrera apparently worked for him when he ran against Perla Tabares Hantman for the School Board in 2010, according to what Casals-Muñoz said in the paper. Cabrera is not on the campaign finance report, either, but like I said before, that means nothing.
Cabrera is, however, on the campaign finance reports for State Sen. Rene Garcia, who paid her $200 in 2008 and her daughter Milagros at the same address $750 in 2010 for “campaign work.”
Maybe that is why, dicen las malas lenguas, Senator Garcia was the third person who went to visit Cabrera the night she got questioned. Ladra isn’t sure. Rafael Perez, a poor wannabe perennial candidate who is son to Modesto Perez — who got paid $200 for “campaign work” by State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez in 2010 — told Ladra earlier this month that he had taken Cabrera a pan con bistec and some chicken soup that night. So maybe it was him with the councilwoman. Either that or Cabrera sure ate well that night.
See? That’s what happens when you don’t tell the truth transparently: People are left to speculate. Casals-Muñoz and Gonzalez won’t say who that third person is that was seen entering Cabrera’s apartment on West 41st Street that night, the only people who visited her before she got a visit from attorney Eric Castillo, who she is obviously not paying herself. Isn’t that reason to suspect something right there? If it was such an innocent meeting — if they were just bringing her a pan con bistec, like they say — why do we need to keep the other person’s name so hush-hush?
Oh, and by the way, a reliable witness tells me they didn’t have no pan con bistec with them when they visited in a car that belonged to the asphalt construction company owned by Gonzalez, who apparently doesn’t have to work there because he is always with the councilwoman. And there’s no record of his payments, either.
The councilwoman never answers my calls. Gonzalez answered Thursday but his house had just been broken into — more mysterious scandal consequences? — and he couldn’t talk (more on that later). When I asked him why he didn’t tell me Casals-Muñoz was with him when he delivered the sandwich, he said he didn’t have to tell me anything. And that’s right. But I hope they make him answer those kinds of questions under oath.
Sen. Garcia answered my first call when I phoned him just after 1 p.m. to ask him about the rendezvous with Cabrera, about another alleged secret meeting in Hialeah Gardens (more on that later), and about all the “campaign work” in his finance reports. “I’m in a meeting,” he said. “Can I call you right back?” One has to be polite. He’s a senator, after all, and the chair of the Hispanic Legislative Caucus and Ladra hates to think that he’s involved. But she does, indeed, think that he’s involved.
Starting with last week when he insisted, after driving by JFK on Election Day, that Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban “Stevie el Bobo” Bovo had nothing to do with and had no knowledge of the 164 absentee ballots that stopped in his district office on the way to the elections department. Because either he’s stupid or he thinks I’m stupid enough to believe that the 25-year-old secretary took it upon herself to risk her job — after they get training specifically about not doing that — without asking him or his wife, probably, Viviana Bovo, who, by the way, used to work in U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio‘s office — so this could explode really big. Or be squashed really tight.
But, I gotta admit, Garcia seems even more guilty after he never called me back Thursday. Or answered the next three calls I made to his cell phone. Or respond to two texts. Well, I was curious. And trying to give him an opportunity to respond.
I would have asked him what “campaign work” meant, especially since he paid Sergio “El Tio” Robaina, the uncle of former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, $100 for such tasks in 2010. Uncle Robaina was arrested last week, after Cabrera, and charged with a felony crime after he filled out ballots for voters and allegedly delivered 164 ballots to the Bovo’s district office. The commissioner’s secretary, nabbed dropping them at the post office, is allegedly cooperating with investigators, on the advice of former State Rep. JC Planas, who is the attorney for Bovo and State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, who is also implicated in the AB scandal.
I know, right? It’s like a web, which is what makes it conspiracy, which is what makes it organized crime. Someone call the feds, please.
Who else did Sen. Garcia pay for “campaign work”? Because now Ladra’s just endlessly curious. Why, look at this. Emelina Llanes, another known boletera, got $200 and change while Isolina Maroño, the mother of Sweetwater Mayor Manny Maroño, got $1,050 and Sabrina Casals Garcia, the councilwoman’s niece, got $650.
And here we thought Emelina was good at what she does.
“Campaign work” can be so vague, however, and so there are tons of other people there that Ladra hopes authorities are talking to. People like Ana Cabeza and Liliana Oliveros, whose names appear over and over again — $100
here, $200 there — until it climbs into the thousands. There are dozens of them, two or three sometimes with the same last name at the same homes, because this ballot bundling is better when done with a buddy system or relatives.
Casals-Muñoz said in the paper that she had not been questioned about the AB scandal by authorities — which is a scandal in and of itself. If she hasn’t been questioned, they are either waiting until the end — which means she is a “person of interest” — or they are totally blowing it. She needs to be questioned.
Both she and Garcia need to be summoned immediately, and grilled under oath, so they can be charged with perjury if, or when, they lie. Again.
Hialeah AB fraud: Vivian Casals-Muñoz involved added by Ladra on
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