Miami Lakes Interim Mayor Ceasar Mestre — who was vice mayor until the arrest last week of Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi on bribery and extortion charges after an FBI sting operation — has dropped out of the race to replace Pizzi permanently. In a text message to his friends and other council members, Mestre said […]
Add one more name to what looks like a quite crowded special mayoral ballot for Miami Lakes to replace the suspended Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi, who was arrested Tuesday for his role in a federal grants kick-back sting set up by the FBI. Despite rumors that Miami Lakes Mayor Wayne Slaton, who lost to Pizzi […]
The federal kick-back sting that led to the arrest this week of two Miami-Dade mayors and two of our local lobbyists also sheds light on some stark differences between two council members in Miami Lakes. The feds call them Councilmember A and Councilmember B in the affidavit that supported the arrest of Miami Lakes Mayor […]
You mean, there were only two? That’s one of the questions I am left with after Tuesday’s big news that Sweetwater Mayor Manny Maroño and Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi were arrested on federal bribery and extortion charges. Ladra is not too surprised that these two mayors — both of whom have been accused of abusing their power in […]
Scaling back the Miami-Dade Police public corruption unit is actually a good thing for local investigations and is being done in an effort to work more closely with federal authorities. That’s what Miami-Dade Police Director J.D. Patterson, who took over after the last chief suddenly took an early retirement last year smack dab in the […]
Maybe Deisy Cabrera, the Hialeah boletera, did get an anniversary present from Mayor Carlos “Not So Golden Boy” Gimenez after all. It appears that at least 16 of the investigators from the public corruption unit have been transferred to other divisions, like the economic crimes bureau, homicide, narcotics, the warrants bureau and even the marine […]