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Corruption Probe Sweeps County
By PAT MINARCIN and LENNY SAVINO The Tampa Tribune
Published: Dec 22, 2002
TAMPA - The
housekeeper was frantic.
Sprawled before her was her boss, Charles D. ``Buddy''
Edwards, looking waxy and lifeless.
On the other end of the line, a 911 dispatcher was
telling her to try CPR. Help was on the way, the dispatcher said. Breathe
into the mouth, compress the chest, stay calm.
It didn't help. Edwards, an eccentric millionaire who
lived in a stately home in New Tampa, was dead.
Soon an FBI agent would be telling the medical
examiner's office that this might have been a mob hit. Please, he asked, do
an autopsy.
It was a revealing moment in a drama that has been
playing itself out behind a veil of extraordinary secrecy for the past two
years.
At its center is a sweeping corruption investigation in
Hillsborough County that has been almost a decade in the making, and is
unfolding from the county courthouse to the sheriff's office, from bars and
restaurants here to hotels as far away as Las Vegas, and even on a
collection of flower farms in Costa Rica.
Some judges have been questioned. So has a woman who,
according to state records, runs a local escort service. It also involves
maybe a score of other people - some of them wealthy and socially prominent
in Tampa - who lost tens of
thousands of dollars in a failed business scheme. And finally, there's a
well-connected sheriff's major who is a leading campaign fundraiser for
Sheriff Cal Henderson and who appears in pivotal roles in the investigation
time and again.
The officials in charge of the probe said they can't
discuss it or even confirm that it is under way. But in response to
inquiries from The Tampa Tribune, the FBI recently issued this statement:
``The FBI and FDLE [Florida Department of Law
Enforcement] conduct numerous investigations each year regarding possible
criminal activity. All legal avenues are utilized to determine the veracity
of complaints and allegations received. Investigative results are presented
to the appropriate prosecuting authority.''
Privately, however, investigators said the probe is
being conducted by a task force of about 10 agents from the FBI, FDLE and
local departments. The probe generally is moving along two tracks, they
said. One involves allegations of case-fixing and payoffs at the
courthouse; the other, organized crime allegations - particularly gambling
and prostitution.
Already the two tracks have overlapped in some places.
Investigators believe that eventually they will merge.
Meanwhile, both tracks have spawned a number of side
inquiries - so many that agents said even they have had trouble at times
figuring out how the complicated mosaic fits together.
Hard-To-Prove Claims
Partly as a result of that, the probe has been
slow-going.
But other issues have complicated the investigation as
well.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert O'Neill said that,
although he can't talk about this case specifically, corruption cases in
general are notoriously difficult to prove, and judicial corruption cases
are even more so.
``Judges are invested with a great deal of discretion
and are called upon to make a great deal of judgment calls,'' O'Neill said.
``One side in litigation is almost always unhappy with the decision
rendered. Absent something of value being given to the judicial officer, it
would be very difficult to prove wrongdoing.''
Beyond that problem, there has been tension between some
agents and supervisors working the case. It has suffered from agent transfers
and has been plagued by frequent changes in the prosecutors overseeing it
from inside the U.S. attorney's office.
There also have been a number of dead ends. One - a
failed attempt in May to get the sheriff's major, Rene ``Rocky'' Rodriguez,
to take a $5,000 payoff - almost completely derailed the inquiry.
A few weeks ago, however, agents held a summit to
discuss whether they had enough to push the investigation forward. It
didn't take them long to decide to keep going.
``My recollection is that we didn't discuss it for very
long at all,'' said one person who was there. ``Mostly we talked about
finding ways we could cooperate.''
Prosecutors have presented some evidence gathered by the
agents to a federal grand jury. It is not clear yet whether, or when, the
grand jury will consider indictments.
Because grand jury proceedings are secret, many details
of the investigation remain hidden from view. But there have been
tantalizing glimpses of it.
One of the earliest involved testimony
given to a special state grand jury seated in Tampa two years ago to
consider a series of scandals at the courthouse.
Another involved what originally appeared to be a failed
business scheme that cost a number of investors - some of them wealthy and
socially prominent - tens of thousands of dollars.
A third emerged when investigators tried to get
Rodriguez to take the payoff, only to have him do a reverse operation on
them.
A fourth involved the death of Edwards, the eccentric
millionaire.
The Edwards Interview
Edwards, 58, once told an acquaintance not to sit in
front of windows lest she be mistaken for him by an assassin, and kept
company with a retired Tampa police officer who
worked as a private investigator and who sometimes acted as Edwards'
chauffeur and bodyguard.
Edwards ran a marketing company, had extensive land
holdings in the area and contributed liberally to a youth camp run by the
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
He had married the same woman three times and was in the
process of divorcing her for the third time. He also was badly overweight,
had a history of heart and drinking problems (sheriff's records show that
he was arrested in 1986, 1989 and 1991 for DUI), and was on a number of
medications for conditions such as arthritis, among them the powerful
painkiller oxycodone.
Late last year, Edwards began circulating a leaflet at
the county courthouse suggesting that something was amiss in his latest
divorce case. It came to the attention of the sheriff's office, where a
detective, Sgt. David Catlin, was assigned to
investigate.
But there was a problem.
Catlin knew Edwards was
friends with Rodriguez, the sheriff's major who later would become the
target of the failed sting attempt. And Catlin
worked for Rodriguez. Catlin told Rodriguez this
posed a potential conflict of interest, so Rodriguez called the FDLE.
``At this point it was decided that FDLE would become
the lead ... agency in this investigation,'' Catlin
later wrote in a sheriff's department memo.
The assignment went to veteran FDLE Agent Ken Sanz, who interviewed Edwards on Dec. 7, 2001. Catlin
went along as an observer.
Edwards said little about his divorce case, according to
agents, and what he did say didn't lead anywhere. Instead, he talked to the
investigators about gambling, prostitution - and Rodriguez, agents said.
Sanz wrote a report on
the interview that was soon forwarded to the FBI. Rodriguez learned about
this and angrily called the FDLE to complain, agents said.
Edwards died three weeks later.
Autopsy And Review
It happened Dec. 20, shortly after Edwards returned home
from a doctor's appointment. Edwards told his housekeeper he didn't feel
well and went to bed, according to a Tampa police report. She
discovered the body a few hours later and called 911.
Paramedics found no sign of foul play and believed
Edwards had suffered a heart attack. Police noticed nothing amiss, either.
Somewhere along the way, the housekeeper also called
Rodriguez, the police report said. He arrived within minutes - perhaps even
before paramedics, agents said, although that isn't clear from the police
report. The housekeeper said Edwards had instructed her to call the major
if anything ever happened to him, the police report said.
Agents said Rodriguez was seen going through papers in a
room Edwards used as an office.
Because of Edwards' history of heart problems, the
medical examiner's office decided initially that there was no reason for an
autopsy.
Then something happened suggesting that, even dead,
Edwards was important to the corruption investigation.
An FBI agent telephoned Associate Medical Examiner
Daniel Spitz and asked him to do an autopsy, Spitz remembered later.
Spitz asked why. Because Edwards figured in a major
investigation and might have been the victim of a mob hit, the agent
replied. A mob hit? Spitz asked. Isn't the mob usually more obvious? Well,
maybe Edwards was poisoned, the agent said.
Spitz did the autopsy and wrote that Edwards' death
appeared to be the result of heart disease.
But a few weeks ago, based partly on questions from the
Tribune, Spitz sought a supplemental toxicology test. It revealed
significant levels of prescription drugs in Edwards' system, among them oxycodone.
``The drug levels ... suggest a drug-related death as
opposed to a death secondary to heart disease,'' Spitz wrote in an amended
autopsy report. ``There [is] no evidence at this time that this was ... an
intentional overdose or that the drugs were given against the will of the
decedent.''
That left Spitz to conclude that the overdose most
likely was accidental.
But the FBI isn't aware of any of this. The agent who
asked for the autopsy in the first place has never called back to follow
up, Spitz said.
History Of Scandal
The Edwards affair was one instance in which the twin
tracks of the investigation appeared to overlap. FBI and FDLE agents jumped
on it as quickly as they did because initially, they thought Edwards might
know something that would help them in their probe of alleged case-fixing
at the courthouse. Instead, what he said proved valuable to the other main
track of the investigation.
The origins of the case-fixing probe go back to a
seemingly unrelated series of events beginning in 2000.
Among other things, Hillsborough State Attorney Harry
Lee Coe III shot and killed himself as FDLE agents were investigating news
reports that he was piling up gambling debts, had borrowed money from a
small circle of employees and was using his state-issued laptop computer to
visit gambling sites online.
About the same time, separate and unrelated allegations
began surfacing about a number of Hillsborough circuit judges. A swarm of
investigations followed. One of them involved the discovery after hours of
Judge Robert Bonanno inside the locked chambers of
a colleague, Judge Greg Holder. By the time this set of investigations was
over, five judges had resigned.
Gov. Jeb Bush ordered the FDLE to look into all the
turmoil and appointed an outside prosecutor, State Attorney Jerry Hill of Bartow, to oversee the inquiry into these scandals.
Soon Hill seated a special grand jury to take testimony and consider the
evidence.
As that probe moved forward, FDLE agents began picking
up rumors of case-fixing and other activities. They couldn't tell at first
whether what they were hearing was credible. But some of it seemed to match
other things state and federal agents had heard through the years, and they
began to dig.
Overriding The System
In the beginning, that track of the investigation
centered on a courthouse computer system. Every new case filed at the
courthouse is entered in the system.
The system was installed at least partly to discourage
case-fixing. It's supposed to prevent someone from being able to
surreptitiously steer a case to a particular judge.
Holder, the judge whose chambers Bonanno
had entered after hours, was asked about the system when he appeared before
the special grand jury, according to a previously unreported transcript of
his testimony.
``There is a way to override that system,'' Holder said.
``There is a way to jury-rig the assignment of cases. Do I think that this
has occurred in the past in the General Civil Division [in other words,
among the judges who hear civil lawsuits]? We're talking about the big
money cases. I don't know. I don't know. I think maybe.''
Joan Helms, a clerk who acknowledged having had an
affair with Bonanno, also was asked whether the
system could be subverted, transcripts show.
Helms said she didn't think so, but it was clear from
the way Hill framed many of his questions that he and the investigators
suspected otherwise.
At one point, Hill mentioned that a significant
percentage of cases filed by a particular attorney at the courthouse over a
period of years had been assigned to Bonanno, one
of about 50 judges there. Hill pressed Helms for an explanation.
``It was just a fluke, I guess,'' Helms said.
``The man filed 47 cases,'' Hill interjected a moment
later. ``Roughly one- seventh of them went to Judge Bonanno.''
``Right,'' Helms answered. But she said the real purpose
of the computer system was to ensure the equitable distribution among
judges of incoming cases, and the test of whether it worked was whether, at
the end of the day, all the judges were carrying similar caseloads.
When Bonanno testified before
the grand jury, he also was asked whether the system could be manipulated.
``If it's possible, I don't know it,'' Bonanno answered.
Bribery Allegations
That was the jumping-off point for the case- fixing
probe.
Investigators have spent the past two years following
their arithmetic, looking first at whether it was pointing them toward the
right conclusion, and if so, how it was being done, who was involved, and
how extensive it was.
FDLE agents first checked the computer system, according
to Clerk of Courts Richard Ake, but found nothing
unusual.
Agents also have interviewed several judges, although
they won't say how many or what they've been told. One of them is Holder,
but he won't say what was discussed.
``Approximately six months ago,'' Holder adds, ``I was
contacted by the FBI to give evidence, and I have spoken with agents ... on
several occasions since then, discussing various issues involving the
courthouse and its personnel.''
Agents have reviewed dozens of cases - among them
big-money divorces, commercial lawsuits, and criminal cases involving
everything from stolen goods to drug dealing.
They are investigating allegations of case-fixing dating
back several years. They have been told it was done in exchange for bribes
and favors including prostitutes and tickets for sporting events.
Agents also are scrutinizing Rodriguez as part of this
leg of the investigation, they said. Rodriguez supervised bailiffs at the
courthouse for two years in the mid-1990s. His desk diary, obtained by the
Tribune through a public records request, shows that although he left that
position in 1996, he continued to meet from time to time with courthouse
higher-ups.
Thorny Investments
Soon after Edwards died, agents opened another
investigation involving Rodriguez. This one centered on a failed business
venture billed as a wholesale flower operation. Investigators want to know
whether it was a front for loan-sharking, as at least one participant has
alleged.
The venture collapsed early this year and left investors
holding the bag for what Rodriguez's attorney, Norman Cannella,
recently said was $2 million. Agents said the sum wasn't that much, but was
still substantial.
The business, called The Rose Pit,
was put together by a man named Richard H. Roth, state records show. Its
stated purpose was to import roses from Costa Rica and resell them to
supermarkets and florist shops.
Neither Roth nor Rodriguez have
said how they met. But according to a subsequent sheriff's office report
that touched on the subject, Rodriguez invested $24,000 in the business.
He made the investment in two checks written to cash,
the sheriff's report said. Usually such checks are made out in the name of
the business.
Rodriguez also encouraged others to get in on the deal.
One investor remembers Rodriguez first talking up the
idea during a chance encounter in the fall of 2001 at Charley's
Steakhouse, a favorite Rodriguez hangout. The investor, who spoke on the
condition that he not be identified, said Rodriguez pitched him on it twice
more - the third time by adding that he was negotiating supply arrangements
with a couple of supermarket chains and that he had just persuaded another
acquaintance, a produce dealer named Stephen Rosa, to invest.
The investor finally put up $25,000, made a quick 15
percent return, and decided to invest more. Then checks from The Rose Pit
that were supposed to represent dividends started bouncing, and the
investor went to Rodriguez for help.
Roth's History Of Fraud
``He said, `We're going to investigate,' '' the investor
said. Rodriguez also told him he had discovered that Roth had done jail
time previously for the same thing in New York.
Roth couldn't be reached for comment. But public records
show that in 1993, he was convicted in New York on charges of wire
fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property, according to public
records. A year later he was sentenced to four years in prison in Missouri for writing a bad
check for more than $5,000 to a jewelry store. Then he was picked up in Texas for failing to pay
restitution in the New York case. Court
documents involving that allegation said Roth was running substantial sums
of money through a bank account in Tampa, and also frequently
was using a bank debit card at a Tampa dog track.
``What I couldn't understand was, why didn't Rocky know
that?'' the investor said. ``He's a cop, for God's sake. I believed him
when he said this was a good deal. If anybody should have known something
wasn't right, it should have been him.''
In fact, a sheriff's office document suggests that
Rodriguez did know something wasn't right.
To help sell prospective investors on The Rose Pit, Roth
was taking them in small groups to Costa Rica to see the farms
where the roses supposedly were being grown. At least one of the groups was
joined by a woman named Terry Hess.
In September 2001, five months before The Rose Pit's
collapse, Karen Henry, a vice detective working for Rodriguez, opened an
investigation of Hess, a sheriff's report shows. Sgt. John Henry, who
supervises the department's vice unit, remembers
that Rodriguez requested the investigation personally.
Hess ``is operating an escort service in the Tampa Bay area,'' Henry wrote
several days into the investigation. In fact, state business records show
that Hess runs a company called Hess International Matchmakers Inc., with
an address in Tampa.
Hess said she went to Costa Rica only to go
sightseeing and adds, ``I had never been there before.''
She turns away most other questions about her
involvement in the case. But several months ago, she said, agents armed
with a warrant searched her home. She will not say on the record whether
they removed anything.
Hess has not been charged, and said she knows nothing
about a grand jury investigation.
Collapse Of A Sting
It wasn't part of the investigative plan, but Rodriguez
was publicly identified as a target in the probe when the attempt to get
him to take the $5,000 payoff fell apart.
A man named Nelson J. Valdes,
43, of Apollo Beach, stopped in to see
Rodriguez one day back in May after telephoning ahead several times,
according to sheriff's report on the incident. He had been friends with
Rodriguez since childhood.
While Rodriguez went into law enforcement, Valdes went into the car business, in one case as a
partner with reputed local mob boss Vince LoScalzo,
according to state business records. Then federal agents raided Valdes' car lots in the summer of 2000 in what they
said then was an ongoing investigation. Agents said they later ``flipped'' Valdes, turning him into an undercover informant.
Valdes said he had dropped
by to warn Rodriguez that a man Rodriguez was doing business with - Roth,
though Valdes called him ``Ronnie the Flower
Man'' - was spreading word that Rodriguez was loan-sharking him, the
sheriff's report states. And, Valdes said, he was
there to give Rodriguez $5,000 from Ronnie.
Rodriguez shunted Valdes to a
subordinate, who offered to take the money as evidence. Valdes
refused and left - being tailed, on orders from Rodriguez, by a lieutenant,
two sergeants, seven detectives and a sheriff's helicopter. They saw Valdes meet two carloads of agents soon afterward in a
motel parking lot near the state fairgrounds.
Some agents suspect that because of Rodriguez's response,
he was warned about the sting attempt ahead of time. Rodriguez refers all
questions about the incident to his attorney, Cannella,
who has said Rodriguez's reaction shows he is innocent.
Sheriff Henderson said the first time he heard about
Rodriguez's involvement in the investigation was about four or five weeks
before the attempted bribe.
A high-ranking FBI supervisor in Tampa, Larry Albert, had
given him a ``courtesy call,'' Henderson said.
``He told me they were working on a usury and Ponzi scheme investigation, and that Rocky Rodriguez's
name came up,'' Henderson said. Usury, commonly called loan-sharking, is
charging exorbitant or illegal interest rates on loans. A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud.
Had he told Rodriguez? ``No, not at all,'' Henderson said. ``I didn't
tell anyone.''
Afterward, Henderson said, the FBI told
him more about the investigation. But he said he couldn't discuss that.
``It's all confidential,'' he said.
Albert, meanwhile, was promoted a few weeks ago to the
FBI's Los Angeles division, where he
will be in charge of criminal investigations.
Was it a violation of FBI policy for Albert to have
given Henderson the courtesy call?
Albert was out of town and unavailable for comment.
But ``every case is reviewed on its own merit,'' said
James F. Jarboe, special agent in charge of the
FBI's Tampa office, ``and a
notification is made where appropriate.''
Gambling Trail's End
Rodriguez's name has surfaced before in state and
federal investigations, agents said.
One example can be found in an FDLE report written in
August 1993. In it, an agent recounts an unnamed confidential informant
``of proven reliability'' telling of friendships between Rodriguez, alleged
mob boss LoScalzo and others ``known to be
involved in questionable criminal activity.'' The informant also is quoted
in the report as saying he had firsthand knowledge of Rodriguez ignoring
illegal gambling. Agents said they didn't have enough information to
warrant an investigation.
In an unrelated FDLE report in 1994, another informant
who had pleaded guilty in a mail fraud case is quoted as telling agents
that he traveled with Rodriguez and others from Tampa to Las Vegas and elsewhere to
gamble. The informant, who worked in the regional office of a Fortune 500
company, said he borrowed heavily to cover his losses, then
began using company money to make substantial donations to a Tampa police charity. The
informant wrote nine checks to the charity totaling $7,500 over four
months. What really piqued their interest, the report shows, was their
belief that Rodriguez administered the charity's bank accounts.
About the same time, agents said, they started digging
into what appeared to be a major illegal gambling case in Tampa. But the trail went
cold shortly after a briefing on the probe involving several law
enforcement agencies.
Rodriguez was among those who attended the briefing,
agents said. A short time later, some of the targets accompanied Rodriguez
on a trip to Las Vegas, a favorite
Rodriguez vacation spot.
When the group returned, wiretaps that had provided
investigators with a number of leads went dry. Investigators tried to
revive the case, but finally concluded the targets had been tipped and gave
up.
Rodriguez refers all questions about the current probe
to his attorney, Cannella, who said that any
investigation of his client would be ``a wild goose chase.''
Rodriguez is the victim of a ``vendetta,'' Cannella said.
Meanwhile, at the courthouse, a Tribune reporter asked
Chief Judge Manuel ``Manny'' Menendez Jr. what he
knows about the investigation. Nothing, he said. He promised to launch his
own inquiry, and later said he had been told by state and federal officials
that no such investigation is under way.
THIS SPECIAL REPORT
To report and write this story, a team of Tampa Tribune editors and
reporters spent the past two months interviewing more than 25 federal,
state and local investigators as well as a number of witnesses, and
reviewing thousands of pages of transcripts and investigative reports.
Many spoke on the condition that they not be publicly identified.
As a matter of policy, the Tribune ordinarily does not
publish news stories based on unnamed sources.
But the policy provides exceptions for circumstances in
which the news is judged to be of paramount importance to the public and
can be told only through the use of unnamed sources.
In such circumstances, the newspaper's editors carefully
weigh the credibility of the sources, their reasons for wishing to remain
anonymous, the degree to which their information
can be verified by other people or documents, and the public's right to
know.
In this instance, our sources insisted on anonymity for
several reasons, some of them legal and some involving concern over
personal safety.
Each verified what others said. And documents supported
the general framework of what they disclosed.
Tribune researcher Michael Messano
contributed to this report, along with reporters Michael Fechter, John W. Allman and
Doug Stanley. Pat Minarcin can be reached at
(813) 259-7604; Lenny Savino at (813) 259-7567.
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