Deisy Cabrera plea deal saves politicians tied to AB fraud

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Everybody knew it would happen: Hialeah boletera Deisy Cabrera got a sweet deal in which she does one year probation for her part in the collecting of absentee ballots in last year’s primary, during which she was caught with dozens of ballots.

But it still feels like a shot in the gut. Is anybody else as depressed as Ladra? Is this Chinatown?

Wait, there’s a funny part, too: Cabrera also has to stay away from politics for a year. A whole year. Well, maybe six months if she stays on good behavior and cuts her probation short.

But it’s hard to keep laughing when we all know this means that the buck stops here. The more corrupt politicians and their campaign consultants — the very people who stood to benefit from Cabrera’s activities, which you can bet she was doing at someone’s behest — will get off Scott free.

Cabrera was stopped on July 25 and found with 12 ballots for the August primary, but police know she handled at least 31. She was charged with absentee-ballot fraud, a third-degree felony, for filling out the one ballot for a woman who had a brain tumor and was unresponsive and with two misdemeanor counts of violating a county ordinance that prohibits anyone from holding more than two ballots belonging to other voters.

The state dropped the felony charge, but I think the voter had died and the family was not cooperative — and Cabrera pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charges.Conditions of her probation include the caveat that she not participate in politics, for at least six months. So basically she has to sit out one election cycle.

So, Cabrera cops a plea and gets a year probation, that could be shortened to six months, but if it is a “deal”– you know, the exchange of one thing for another — what do we get? “We the people,” that is? What does the public get?

Ladra asked a spokesman at the Broward State Attorney’s Office. Don’t have an answer yet.

But I will bet it gets us a whole lot of nada. No more questions. No more probing. No more names. No more details. No more will come out of this.

Case closed.

Same thing happened in August with Sergio “El Tio” Robaina, uncle to former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, who was caught delivering absentee ballots to an aide for Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo. Robaina got a year probation in a plea deal where we got nothing.

Same thing happened last year when the aforementioned aide, Anamary Pedrosa, was busted last year with 164 ballots that she was taking from Bovo’s district office to the post office. She got immunity. We got nothing.

How convenient for some people.

Remember, dear readers, this is a case that implicated some of our highest electeds, including Bovo, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Not So Golden Boy” Gimenez and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, who had to remove herself after the campaign consultant she shares with Gimenez was tied to Cabrera. That’s why the case was sent to Broward.

A lot of good that did us.

Now, we’ll never know who Cabrera was collecting ballots for this go around. I say this go around because she has worked for other politicians in the past, including Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian Casals-Munoz and State Sen. Rene Garcia.

Now we’ll never know if there were more than the 30 or so ballots that she was caught with that she had collected before private investigator Joe Carrillo tipped off the Miami-Dade Police public corruption unit, which was dismantled after this investigation by Gimenez’s hand picked police chief and deputy chief.

Now we’ll never know how many other frail voters-in-a-coma Cabrera stole from. And for who.

Now we’ll never know who is paying her attorney, who read a statement in court that called his client “a lamb led to slaughter” and made some reference to how the real culprits escape any kind of punishment.

Well, at least we agree on that point.

He also said something about how Cabrera was a misunderstood viejita who only wanted to help more elderly people who wanted to vote. Coma or no coma, we suppose.

Well, guess what? She can do that again in about six months to a year.

  absentee ballot fraud, Deisy Cabrera