The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics & Public Trust announced Wednesday that it had sued 
Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez for his failure to pay $4,000 in fines and costs after an investigation found that he lied to the public through the media about his loansharking activities.
Hernandez tried to pay: He sent the commission a van load of 28 Home Depot buckets filled with 400,000 pennies. The clown that he is, Hernandez apparently alerted the media because they were there to see the pennies delivered.
Ladra is only surprised that he didn’t send them a stack of dollar bills.
The payment was seen as a slap in the face and rejected.
“His ploy was deemed commercially unreasonable and contemptuous,” a commission statement reads.
Read related story: Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez is fined for loanshark lies
In July, the Ethics Commission found that Hernandez violated the Truth in Government provision of the Citizens’ Bill of Rights when he told journalists and readers and TV viewers that income he earned from a private loan to jeweler and convicted ponzi schemer Luis Felipe Perez was on the principal and not interest payments. The truth came out months later when Hernandez testified in the tax evasion trial against former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, his mentor and predecessor, and admitted the payments were for interest — 36% interest, way above what it’s legal to collect.
Hernandez was never charged and everyone assumes he was given some kind of deal to testify. But now everybody knew he had been lying about this personal loan since 2011. An investigator called it “insulting the intelligence of the public.”
The Ethics Commission fined him $3,000 for the two counts, double the fine because the commission found that Hernandez knowingly violated the rules ($1,000 are for investigative costs).
Hernandez has said in the past that the ethics commission has no jurisdiction and is politically motivated to harass him. But some might think that sending 28 buckets of copper was a form of harassment.
The lawsuit was filed in small claims court and a hearing is set for Dec. 9.
Ethics Commission sues Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
