The Ponzi thief who picked judges

Posted on Tue, Dec. 06, 2011

The Ponzi thief who picked judges

Fred Grimm

MiamiHerald.com/columnists

Where do judges come from?

From Marybeth Feiss, of course.

Feiss, according to federal investigators, ran the fraudulent political contribution scheme that enabled her bombastic, absurdly grandiose, insanely ostentatious Ponzi thief of a boss, among other outrages, to buy himself a seat on the state judicial nominating committee.

Feiss, 42, was charged last week with bundling hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from 2006 through 2009 at the behest of the infamous scammer Scott Rothstein. Some $3 million was funneled to local, state and federal candidates and political parties, much of it illegally, through lawyers and employees (and their spouses) of his now-defunct Las Olas Boulevard law firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler.

The criminal complaint, filed Thursday (exactly two years after the feds arrested Rothstein), states: “It was the object of the conspiracy that Rothstein and his co-conspirators, including Feiss, aimed to dramatically increase the political influence and power of RRA and become one of the most powerful law firms in the country by utilizing some of the attorneys and administrative personnel of RRA and other persons associated with RRA to unlawfully make prohibited political contributions.” Rothstein reimbursed his minions for the contributions, much of it in the guise of bonuses.

John Gillies, the head of the FBI office in South Florida, put it a bit more succinctly. With Feiss, his administrative assistant, doing what assistants do, Gillies said, “Rothstein tried to buy political influence with the money he stole from the Ponzi scheme to contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns.”

But Rothstein didn’t just try to buy political influence. He outright bought it.

The complaint noted that as a result of all those nicely bundled contributions, Rothstein was named a delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. Well, maybe that’s just modern politics, which has more to do with fawning over wealthy donors than serving voters.

But on Aug. 25, 2008, Gov. Charlie Crist appointed this money-slinging buffoon to the Fourth District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission. That’s where judges come from. Rothstein’s term would have lasted until July, 2012, except in the fall of 2009 his $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme crumbled and Rothstein was busted. A 50-year federal prison sentence, as it turns out, trumps a term on the judicial commission.

Before his arrest, Rothstein showed us that an amoral thief, provided he stole enough, could buy his way into the democratic process. He demonstrated that we’ve got ourselves government by eBay. Rothstein, with enough money, could party with the governor and hunker down with John McCain and decide who’s going to fill a vacancy on the Broward circuit court.

Around the time of his arrest, we were treated to the amusing scenario of pols from both parties frantically shedding Rothstein contributions, though surely all but the most naïve political operatives had long suspected that Rothstein and his billionaire lifestyle with all those mansions and exotic cars and jewelry and yachts didn’t compute. The so-called securitized lawsuit settlements he was peddling could hardly have added up to such riches.

But, of course, they had accepted his contributions. Three million dollars has a way of stifling suspicions.

Poor Marybeth Feiss. She must have assumed that with so many powerful politicians lapping up bundled campaign contributions from her boss — none of them bothering to question the dodgy origins — the vagaries of federal campaign law didn’t really matter. If Rothstein was spending $52,000 on Charlie Crist’s birthday party, helping the governor blow out the birthday candles, she must have thought that nobody cared all that much about illegal campaign contributions.

Nobody did. Not until the Ponzi collapsed and left investors out some $317 million. Feiss is the eighth person arrested so far in the Rothstein mess, but the first to face election-law charges. If it hadn’t been for the audacity of Rothstein’s financial fraud, nobody would have investigated a few million dollars’ worth of illegal campaign contributions.

If Rothstein had been only been a better thief, he could still be cavorting with pols. He’d still be picking our judges.

Please read complete article at links below:

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/05/v-print/2533028/the-ponzi-thief-who-picked-judges.html#ixzz1gFkernwP
 
 
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/05/2533028/the-ponzi-thief-who-picked-judges.html

Editor's note: Your ProbateShark believes, our crooked judges in the Probate Court of Cook County are a higher class of criminal than the Miami bunch. Cook County crooks don't have to depend on Ponzi thievery, they just issue court orders to steal from the dead, dying, disabled and aged.  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com

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