The Florida Bar has opened an investigation into the homestead exemption fraud by Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors, an attorney and former president of the Coral Gables Bar Association.
After receiving a complaint from activist resident Jack Thompson, Bar Counsel Richard Coombs responded that they would look into the illegal homestead exemptions Fors claimed for years on a Little Havana condo he did not live in.
“Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention,” Coombs wrote Thompson on April 3. “The Florida Bar has opened up a case as the complainant and will investigate this matter.”
Thompson’s complaint is closed, Coombs said, because The Florida Bar filed its very own complaint. That seems interesting.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal homestead exemption
Fors owns a 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo at 1039 SW 5th Street in Miami and 
said he lived there for a few months before he left to college in Gainesville. He never lived there again and, in fact, voted in the city of Coral Gables — his voter’s registration was at his parents’ house — in 2013, 2015 and 2017. Those same years, however, he still had the homestead exemption on 5th Street.
His illegal homestead exemptions were first discovered by Ladra and exposed earlier this year.
But in January, after he filed to run for office and after Ladra started sniffing around — las malas lenguas say he was tipped off — Fors paid the county a total of $13,178.37 all at once for back taxes he got out of on the condo as well as interest and penalties for the years 2010 through 2017. Why not 2018?
But all of a sudden, it seems, he had an urgent need to pay that? Or is it because he is running for office and he knew it would come up that he tried to cheat taxpayers out of his fair share?
In fact, Fors decided not to tell me about the one-time lump sum payment he 
made back to the taxpayers he cheated when he and Ladra spoke on the phone about it a month later. Rather than say he had taken care of it, he stuck to the defense that he was allowed to have the homestead exemption even if he didn’t live there because he didn’t have one someplace else.
If he believed that, why did he pay the penalty? And if he paid the penalty, why didn’t he just say so? Was it because that would be admitting to being a scoundrel who tried to get away with stealing thousands of dollars from taxpayers?
Would he still be doing it if he hadn’t run for office?
Questions that hopefully the Bar investigation will ask Fors. But we won’t know the outcome before Tuesday’s election.
Florida Bar investigates candidate Jorge Fors for homestead fraud added by Ladra on
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[…] though the county sends notices each year notifying homestead recipients of the rules. As first reported in the Political Cortadito blog, he paid the penalties in early 2019 as he prepared to run for his […]
[…] Read related: Florida Bar investigates candidate Jorge Fors for homestead fraud […]
[…] at the seat sideways: Coral Gables Commissioner Jorge Fors — who better get ready for more posts about his homestead exemption fraud — and political operative Kevin Cabrera, whose wife is a state rep. Both are waiting for […]
We saw Mr. Fors last night as I celebrated the first of two victories coming my way. Raul VF and then Ralph Cabrera. Mr. Fors approached my mentor Maria Garcia. He asked Maria how she was doing. She answered without blinking, “great and I am not voting for you”. He then looked at me. I answered “I am doing even better and I am also not voting for you”.
As I strolled away I wondered. Where is he sleeping tonight? He appears to have such confusion where his actual homestead is.
We have another choice, a better choice. Ralph Cabrera is a man of integrity and decency that has the experience to tackle the tasks at hand on day one. Ralph Cabrera. We must vote in the run off.
I think this issue of “homestead” is a gotcha game like the law about not taking the tags off the sofa.
We do rush to find out what disqualifies a candidate but the reality is that we should pay attention to how a candidate responds to controversy, not only the controversy.
Then again, people make mistakes. We’re not defined by our mistakes, we’re defined by our resolve. (A man falls down a thousand times and gets up a thousand times.)
I cannot imagine anyone in this city really thinking that this man is qualified to be our commissioner. I am ashamed of the turn that this election has taken. I can’t wait until it is over tomorrow. Neither Mr. Fors nor Ms. Olazabal deserves the honor of representing the constituents of this City in our dais. They both lack integrity.