Former Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla lost his house to a foreclosure sale last November, even though he is fighting it now in court. And on Thursday, he lost the family farm.
A Krome Avenue property owned by Diaz de la Portilla, who was suspended last September after he was arrested on a dozen felony public corruption charges including money laundering and bribery, was auctioned off by the county for what looks like $9,938 in unpaid taxes, according to the case files at the Miami-Dade Clerk’s office.
The buyer, Mikon Financial Services, bought the property for $704,000. The market value is listed at $582,734 — but it’s bound to increase if Miami-Dade Commissioner Kionne McGhee gets his way and rezones the Redland for food trucks and other amusement uses (more on that later).
Mikon Financial is owned by Richard, Juan Carlos and Pedro Capote, who Ladra was told are real estate investors.
Diaz de la Portilla, who did not return calls and texts, could fight this sale like he is fighting the Nov. 15 auction sale of his Little Havana house. Watch him say he didn’t get notice. The case files indicate that the county delivered notice via certified mail to his home address in January. But that’s the house that was auctioned off, so maybe nobody was home.
Interestingly enough, county property appraiser records show the four-acre property — bought by Fabiola Diaz for $140,000 in 1990 — was, at one point, a nursery tended to by his father, Miguel Diaz. He grew mango trees there, among other plants. The land was gifted to ADLP in 2017.
Read related: Ethics board: Miami’s ADLP had three ‘ghost’ employees on taxpayers’ dime
In 2020, Miami-Dade Police recovered a $117,000 tractor that had been stolen from a construction site.
This is also where the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust found one of ADLP’s District 1 employees, his longtime lackey Julio Guillen, working with others on building a fence during weekday working hours last year.
The property was transferred in 2022 to ADLP Properties Inc, a corporation formed in Delaware in, well, 2022. ADLP Properties registered with the state in January, according to the Florida Division of Corporations. It lists only the former commissioner as manager and Anibal Duarte-Viera, who was embroiled in the shakedown of the Rickenbacker Marina owner, as his registered agent. People who know about these things say it looks like the transfer was a fraudulent attempt to shield the property from the tax deed auction.
So let’s add fraud to the list of charges against Diaz de la Portilla.
Read related: Alex Diaz de la Portilla tries to get his foreclosed house back from the bank
The five-bedroom Little Havana house where Diaz de la Portilla and his two brothers and his sister grew up was sold for $300,100 at a Miami-Dade County foreclosure auction Nov. 15. Owned by ADLP and his former wife, Claudia Davant, the home was purchased by Wells Fargo, which won a $628,545 final foreclosure judgment in 2019.
On Nov. 30, 15 days after the sale, Diaz de la Portilla’s sister, Maria Diaz, filed a motion to vacate the sale and judgement. In it, she says others who live in the home did not get notice of the sale. “Unknown Parties/Tenants include several disabled individuals,” it says.
A hearing on Feb. 27 was continued at the request of Maria Diaz’s new attorney, Rick Yabor, who was just retained and had already scheduled depositions in Duval County on that day. No new date has been set.
Alex Diaz de la Portilla loses Krome Ave farm property to tax deed auction sale added by Ladra on
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