‘Mafia-like thuggery’ is tied to vote on city manager
The three Coral Gables commissioners who voted to fire City Manager Peter Iglesias on Tuesday said they had been threatened or followed in recent days and felt genuine concern not just for their safety but for the safety of their families.
Threats reportedly made against Commissioners Melissa Castro, Ariel Fernandez and Kirk Menendez were something akin to making sure one of the three didn’t make it to Tuesday’s meeting. Police Chief Ed Hudak confirmed that the department was investigating.
“We have taken measures over the last 72 hours to make sure that there were no … issues to be brought to any of you or your family members,” Hudak said. Those measures included increased security at City Hall on Tuesday and at the ground breaking for Fire Station No. 4 on Monday.
“We have taken extraordinary measures to make sure your safety here and to and from your residences has been looked after,” Hudak said.
Mayor Vince Lago said he had told the chief he didn’t want a security detail. Guess he doesn’t want to be exactly like his BFF and role model, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who has a Miami Police city-paid personal bodyguard every waking, and probably sleeping, minute of the day. “I was adamantly clear I don’t need a detail. While my other colleagues are welcome to have a detail, that is not my thing,” Lago said, clearly taking a dig at another commissioner who did have undercover surveillance for her security.
And of course he doesn’t need a security detail. These threats were not made against him or his family.
Commissioner Fernandez said the threats could be related to the organized campaign in favor of keeping the city manager — a campaign Ladra believes was orchestrated by the mayor.
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“Calls and text messages from members of the establishment have been spreading false information and using scare tactics on members of this community. The same political attacks used by the establishment during the last election in order to dissuade residents from voting for Commissioner Castro and myself have been employed now,” Fernandez said.
“The establishment will stop at nothing to hold on to power, while attempting to run a shadow government, circumventing the directives of this commission and the interests of its residents,” he added. “Threats have been made against Commissioners Castro, Menendez and myself, and most disturbing, and residents need to know this, threats have been made against our families.
“To those mounting those threats, let me be clear, I will not be intimidated, and our families are completely off limits.”
Commissioner Castro went on the record and thanked the chief for having an undercover detective follow her “because I was concerned for my safety,” she said.
“I also told my daughter not to go to school today. I have had a drone flying outside my condo on the 17h floor,” said the commissioner, who a resident had earlier derided because she just rents in the Gables and doesn’t own property (more on that later).
“Let me make something very, very clear, I will not be intimidated and you’re not going to scare me to change my vote,” said Castro, who has seemed to blossom in this position. “I vote how I believe I should vote, and that’s the end of it.”
Menendez said he, too, would not back down.
“I don’t respond to threats, nor do I bow down to those who make them,” he said. “Threats, intimidation and mafia-like thuggery have no place in Coral Gables, no place in society and no place in the hearts of mankind.
“There are some who think they can plot and lash out and harm others while hiding in the shadows. But I’m letting you know now that a light is coming — a light that shines brighter than the sun. And those who are hiding in the dark, hiding in the shadows, will be revealed.”
Mayor Lago feigned dismay and brought Chief Hudak to the podium, demanding an investigation that he probably knew was already happening. “I’ve heard rumors that tires have been slashed, that windows have been broken. I want action now. I want forces on the ground to address the issue. I want to know who did it. I want to know who is threatening people in this community.
“Every resource that we have, I want to throw at it.”
Read related: Political retaliation in Coral Gables as Mayor Vince Lago loses his cool again
If anyone has a camera outside their house, like he does, he said, he wants access to it. “If somebody is willing to make a statement… I want to be very, very clear that this will not be tolerated.
“There’s another reason I am doing that,” he said, of asking the chief to “overturn every stone possible in this community til we get to the bottom of it.” Pero por supuesto que there is! He couldn’t just be doing the right thing. “Because there has also been insinuations by the commissioner on my left and the commissioner on my right that I am responsible for it and that Vice Mayor Anderson is responsible.”
No, Vinnie, just you. And you know it. You know who and you know how. Don’t throw Rhonda under the bus. And it’s not a rumor. Menendez’s wife’s car tires were slashed.
Said the Chief: “We have had no major connections criminally that any of you have anything to do with what has happened, whether it’s coincidence or not.”
Coincidence? Why did he throw that in?
Hudak did not return several calls and texts to his cellphone. He hasn’t called me back since Political Cortadito exposed last year that he was calling residents to urge them to vote against Fernandez and Castro. But Ladra has knowledge of at least one open investigation into possible cyber stalking charges against a friend of the mayor’s who is already facing a felony stalking charge in a separate case and whose anonymous online bully persona has been attacking the two newest commissioners for weeks with sophomoric, body-shaming comments, among other taunts.
The person operating as @PapiChulo1265 on the platform we used to call Twitter — who posted a photo of Fernandez new car with the caption “I can attest to commish Gordito was at City Hall doing saduko (sic) for a few hours yesterday” — is suspected to be real estate broker Manny Chamizo, who shared this photo with the governor on Facebook with the same Galaxy Z Flip 5 phone signature.
According to an article in The Real Deal last year, Chamizo worked with Lago, also a real estate agent, to sell the office buying at 3251 Ponce de Leon Boulevard in a deal that fell apart in 2018 and was renegotiated a year later with the same buyer at a higher price. Chamizo’s company sued in 2020 seeking the $6 million in what it said was owed commissions. The company where the mayor worked joined the lawsuit and they reached a settlement last year.
But before they settled, Chamizo — who Lago reappointed last June to the Waterways Advisory Committee and who is the official broker on that space that Lago and his pals rented to developer Rishi Kapoor — was charged in September 2021 with misdemeanor stalking, which was later raised to felony stalking, for making threats to the seller, Eddy Fernandez, and his wife.
Some details from The Real Deal story:
“The alleged stalking and harassment began in the late summer of 2020, three years after Chamizo was introduced to the sellers by way of Lago. Chamizo has been with One Sotheby’s since 2017.
Chamizo allegedly sent threatening text messages and letters to Fernandez and his wife, Adriana Fernandez, ordering them to pay up and that they ‘can’t hide’ from Chamizo, according to county records. One such letter, sent in late August of 2020, allegedly included a matchbox with a single burnt match and a note reading ‘We can get to you.’
“Mr. Chamizo has threatened us, harassed us, with multiple texts, letters,” said Eddy Fernandez in a deposition. Fernandez, who was undergoing cancer treatment at the time, described text messages and emails in which Chamizo allegedly says that Fernandez’s daughter will miss him when he’s dead, and that Chamizo wants to ‘f*ck [Fernandez’s] wife.’
Sounds like exactly the type of guy to make threats to the Gables commissioners. Also telling: All the PapiChulo tweets to Ladra seemed to disappear after I left the mayor a message Tuesday afternoon asking him about it. It’s become a habit that I call L’Ego and he runs to someone else to complain. Thank the universe for screenshots.
Read related: Under fire, Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago sues Cuban radio station for libel
In the Miami Herald’s story on the firing of Iglesias, there is a photo by the paper’s award-winning photographer/editor Jose Iglesias (no relation) of Lago talking to Chamizo during one of the breaks in the commission meeting. He is holding his phone. Was the mayor telling his friend to scrub the Papi Chulo account? He doesn’t look happy.
The story in The Real Deal also says that Chamizo sent some of the threatening messages from the felony case in a group chat with Lago, who then asked to be removed from the group chat — but he went ahead and reappointed the accused stalker to the waterways board after that — and who, court documents show, helped the sellers “navigate the city’s departments by introducing them to the director of parking, so they could convert a parking space in front of the building into a handicap space,” and by introducing the Fernandezes to an architect that was “liked by everybody in permitting there, so he would be a good choice to use.”
Is that another private side gig conflicting interests with Lago’s public service job?
In any case, the Gables Police department initiated an investigation into Chamizo, er, Papi Chulo possibly stalking Fernandez, but it might be at the State Attorney’s Office already.
How do we know that Papi Chulo or other anonymous Lago apologizers on the net — there are quite a few of them (more on that later) — are not behind these recent threats against the three commissioners? Or would that just be a coincidence?
Three Coral Gables commissioners say they have been stalked, threatened added by Ladra on
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