A year later and nada on Hialeah boletera Deisy Cabrera

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Happy Anniversary Deisy Cabrera.

Today marks one year from the day that the Hialeah boletera was detained and questioned by Miami-Dade Police after she was followed for two days and videotaped while she went in and out of the post office, the Hialeah district office for Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo — who was later implicated further with 160-some ballots handled by his staffer — and the Hialeah campaign headquarters for our Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Not So Golden Boy” Gimenez — the second in a chain of events that began our once Golden Boy’s fall from grace, but that is another more on that later.

It was a year ago today that Deisy Penton de Cabrera was caught illegally holding dozens of absentee ballots and charged days later — a year ago a few days from now — and yet, she has yet to face a judge.

It’s been a year since we knew, even if prosecutors don’t, that Cabrera was collecting ballots for Gimenez and the other county and state candidates supported by Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian Casals-Muñoz, who is the boletera’s longtime runner. This is common knowledge and a subpoena to any of 10 or 12 people would provide that information. In a few days, it will be a year since she was formally arrested and charged with ballot fraud. That night, it will be a year since Cabrera got out on bail — paid for by we don’t know who — and got a visit at home from Casals-Muñoz and a man who everyone believes is Sen. Rene Garcia, who “can’t remember” whether he went or not.

We call it “Operation Pan con Bistec” because they say they went there to take her a Cuban steak sandwich. But we’ll never know if there was food or fula in that little white bag.

Because a year has passed and we still don’t know who is paying for Cabrera’s attorney. She’s been characterized as a destitute woman, so poor that she “volunteered” at campaign events for food. But Cabrera has also been paid for her work by candidates including, lo and behold, Sen. Garcia.

A year later, have these people’s sworn statements been taken? Have Bovo, Casals-Muñoz or Garica been deposed? Have their phone records and bank records been subpoenaed? Have investigators or prosecutors talked to Matilda Rodriguez, the woman Cabrera was traveling with the day she was detained? Have they taken any sworn statements from the people in the boletera’s three notebooks, which, granted, they didn’t even know about until a couple of months ago?

You know, one might consider these collective notebooks a smoking gun. Well, that and the ABs she handled. Yet, a year later, she is still free as a bird. Oh, and election season is coming.

A year later, is the only sworn statement prosecutors have taken from Joe Carrillo, the private investigators who authorities — even Gimenez’s own campaign staffers — tried to smear and discredit?

I have yet to get an answer to any of these questions. In fact, all I get from the public information officer at the Broward State Attorney’s Office — which got the case transferred to them after our Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle finally admitted to a possible conflict of interest (read: She was on Casals-Muñoz’s slate) — is the runaround.

“I’m told the case is still progressing,” was the official line from spokesman Ron Ishoy (who probably liked me more when we both worked for the Miami Herald), assuring that my questions were referred to public records. For the second time.

Now, Carrillo is a conspiracy theorist on steroids. Ladra thought she was bad but this P.I. — who uncovered the scam and tipped the police off — is convinced that the wheels are not moving on this case intentionally. Too many people would be burned, he says. Maybe even Fernandez-Rundle herself. And, yeah, it’s in Broward’s hands but history has shown us they’re all too friendly.

“This is a simple case. This is a case that should have been done in six months,” Carrillo told Ladra, and the experienced investigator who has worked with police on several cases is in the position to know. He said he has not heard from the state attorney’s office since he was there in March and told them about the notebooks, which he said were stashed in a Miami-Dade Police major’s desk drawer (more on that later).

“I asked them if they had obtained phone records,” Carrillo said, “and she said, ‘What phone records?’ And I told her the phone records for the two phone numbers on the business card and she said ‘What phone numbers?'”

So, maybe it’s no wonder that here we are a year to the day Cabrera was detained with no clear indication of how far along we’ve gotten.

Meanwhile, there are new and sexier absentee ballot fraud scandals popping up in West Kendall and the city of Miami and people are forgetting about la pobre Deisy Cabrera.

I mean, nobody else has even noticed her anniversary.

  absnetee ballots, Carlos Gimenez, Daisy Cabrera, Deisy Cabrera, Esteban Bovo, Rene Garcia, Vivian Casals-Muñoz