Boletera’s notebooks may script AB fraud cover-up

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The recent stories in the Miami Herald about the notebooks kept by Hialeah boletera Deisy Cabrera, who was arrested last year carrying dozens of ballots during the mayoral election, have reaffirmed what most of us already knew: That she was paid by candidates and/or their campaigns to pick up absentee ballots from voters, many of whom didn’t how they voted.

The notebooks provide names and dollar amounts that, get this, do not match the amounts paid to her in campaign finance reports. That’s because many of us already know that boleteros get paid with what campaigns call “soft money,” which are contributions and expenses that are not reported. But that’s illegal and, get this, prosecutors have not questioned the candidates on the list.

The notebooks also provide names and phone numbers of voters, with notations as to which debilitating condition — blind, deaf, senile — would allow Cabrera to steal their votes on behalf of these candidates. And they provide names and directives from people, including una tal Vicky and someone named Diana, which indicate an organized network (read: organized crime) of boletera business.

But they have yet to seek out or identify this Vicky, which Ladra and others suspect is a Vicky Garcia who worked for Ana Carbonell (guess journalists have to do all the work for police), who ran the unsuccessful campaigns for former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina (for Miami-Dade mayor) and former State Sen. Rudy Garcia (for Hialeah mayor) and who was quoted in the paper as saying she had no idea that Cabrera was “a hustler.” Her word, not mine. Carbonell did not respond to my requests for comment.

Why haven’t prosecutors or investigators tracked Vicky down? Or taken sworn statements from Carbonell or any of the candidates, elected or not?

Ron Ishoy, a spokesman for the Broward State Attorney’s Office, said it is not their practice to comment on ongoing cases.

Nearly ten months after the notebooks were seized, the same day Cabrera’s detention was first reported here on Political Cortadito, they finally came to light, but only thanks to the dogged determination of El Nuevo Herald crack reporters Enrique Flor and Melissa Sanchez, who told Ladra that neither the police nor the prosecutors have done one thing with the notes. Not one phone call has been made. Not one name followed up on.

And you gotta wonder why.

You know what I else I wonder? Have police or prosecutors requested Cabrera’s phone records? Those should also provide the names of people — and Ladra suspects some elected officials or their staff — that may be implicated in this absentee ballot fraud and abuse of the elderly. Because let’s call it what it is.

According to Joe Carrillo, the private investigator who followed Cabrera for two days and opened this can of worms, getting Miami-Dade Police public corruption detectives to stop her — the boletera was constantly chatting with someone.

“She was on the phone 90 percent of the time,” Carrillo told me. “I would have to think that person is telling her where to go.”

One would think those phone records are a pot of gold, or the smoking gun authorities need.

But Ladra has heard that they have not gotten those records.

And you gotta wonder why.

Carillo doesn’t wonder as much. It’s a cover up, he says. And he suspects that big fish — namely Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle — will be implicated.

“It is not my fault that I was following this woman and she led me to the mayor and the state attorney,” Carrillo told me, adding that he apologized to both of them and told them that was not what his intent was.

Both Gimenez and Fernandez-Rundle, and Bovo, were implicated immediately after Cabrera’s arrest. Gimenez more so since she was seen going in and out of his campaign office — for free food, we are told — and because she was stopped just blocks from there and visited by Casals-Muñoz, who helped Gimenez with his Hialeah operation after he made a deal with the devil and got the city’s corrupt council’s tainted endorsement. And since he had hired political consultant Al Lorenzo, whose connections to Cabrera were first documented here in Political Cortadito. Gimenez fired Lorenzo shortly afterwards, but there was no word on the sworn affidavit he and others signed swearing they knew nothing about Cabrera. That would be perjury, no?

Fernandez is also implicated because she, too, had hired Lorenzo and because, while she did not fire him afterwards, she forced him to fire Jerry Ramos, a convict who was working for him and helped run “street operations” in the Gimenez and Rudy Garcia campaigns. And then she referred the Cabrera case to the Broward State Attorney’s Office.

Cabrera was also seen going in and out of Bovo’s office, where one of his aides, who was arrested days later with 164 ballots in her possession, worked before she resigned shortly after being nabbed. Anamary Pedrosa has since been granted immunity — and it was right away, too quickly if you ask Ladra — but is allegedly cooperating with prosecutors. Bovo went into Fernandez-Rundle’s office to give a statement but it was not sworn. One has to wonder if they chatted about their shared issues.

All of these people are implicated, as is Sen. Rene Garcia, who can’t remember if he was with Casals-Muñoz and her bodyguard Jorge Perez when they brought Deisy a “pan con bistec” sandwich — and whatever else, which was the real reason they went — the night after she was detained by police. Can’t remember, my tail. If he was there, he should just say he was there. ‘Cause it will come out. Or will it?

Because neither Perez nor Casals-Muñoz has been called in for questioning under oath. In fact, the only person that I know of that has been sworn to his testimony is Carillo, who was grilled on who hired him to follow Cabrera. Ladra has no reason to disbelieve Hialeah firefighter Eric Johnson, a longtime fighter of the AB fraud machine in the City of Retrogress who has been politically retaliated against for his exposing this fraud, that he was the client. But that is immaterial. It is not as important as the notebooks and phone records themselves. Which gives credence to Carillo’s argument that this is a cover up. “If you can’t go after the criminals, go after the one who exposed them,” Carillo told me he suspects their tack is. After all, it did seem that Kathy Fernandez-Rundle’s office was more interested in who hired him than in the actual crime committed. And how come she is not as concerned with whoever hired Cabrera’s attorney, Eric Castillo (more on that later).

All the people named in the notebooks ought to be called in to testify under oath. At the very worst, as Carrillo says, “Those are people who conspired with Deisy Cabrera to steal votes.” At the very best, they know something about her operation.

Carrillo is frustrated, and rightfully so. As he gets followed, questioned under oath and infected with computer viruses daily, none of these real leads are followed.

And you gotta wonder why.

“Who is protecting these people,” Carrillo asks. “Who benefits from these people not getting in trouble?”

Those are the real questions we should be asking. And Ladra thinks these notebooks are just the tip of the AB iceberg.