A South Florida man sentenced to decades in prison for a minor drug charge will finally get his chance in court to prove he didn’t commit the crime.U.S. District Court Judge Joan A. Lenard issued a ruling September 8 that grants Elroy Phillips a hearing to present his evidence. Phillips…
Meet Jesus Rodolfo Hernandez. During his short tenure with the Miami-Dade Police Department, he racked up enough controversy to qualify as one of the worst people to wear the department’s badge. After being thrown off the force in disgrace, the 26-year-old apparently turned to the illegal sale of monkeys and…
A woman in her 60s was found dead on an Opa-locka street early this morning. Police believe she was shot through the back, but have released few other details…
Controversial former All-Star slugger Manny Ramirez was arrested in Broward County earlier tonight on charges of domestic battery. Ramirez, 39, allegedly slapped his wife so hard she fell back and hit her head on the headboard in the bedroom of their Weston home. Updated…
Miami freight shipper Robert Matson Conyers was charged with animal cruelty yesterday after a tri-continental shipment of monkeys turned into a cannibalistic simian catastrophe.Guyanese animal supplier Akhtar Hussain hired Conyers to help ship 25 monkeys — 14 marmosets, five white-fronted capuchins, and six squirrel monkeys — to a buyer in…
It is important not only to know your rights when a cop shows up at your door so that you avoid extra trouble, but also to know proper procedure so that you can spot when four crooks pretending to be cops show up at your door with the intent to…
It seems Nevin Shapiro, the scrawny, debauched Ponzi schemer currently trying to dynamite University of Miami athletics, is even slimier than we thought. A woman now claims that Shapiro, along with his convicted felon stepdad, once helped launder drug profits for the PKK, a notorious Turkish terrorist group. The claims…
South Florida can add another feather to its fraud cap: scummiest Medicare scammers in the U.S.SoFla has long been the anus epicenter of health care fraud (see Rick Scott and Columbia/HCA). So it’s no surprise that when prosecutors announced charges today against 91 people in a massive, months-long national investigation into…
More than 50 members of the Colombian “Bandas Criminales” (AKA BACRIM) drug-trafficking organization have been rounded up after a joint operation based out of Miami. It’s the biggest bust of the emerging drug-trafficking gang since Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, took aim at…
Oscar Alvarado-Montoya and his friends gave Michael Rodriguez a beer. Rodriguez returned the favor by hitting Alvarado-Montoya over the head with the bottle. The injury would turn out to be fatal, and now Rodriquez faces first-degree murder charges…
What is it about Miami that makes the mundane seem so… menacing?Take the case of Mauret Curbelo, the manager of Danilo Ranch, where Hialeah peters out into the Everglades. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture suspected Curbelo of running an illegal slaughterhouse from his ranch. USDA investigators went…
Last night, North Miami Beach police shot and killed Ernest Vassell after they thought he was violently brandishing a loaded gun. Turns out Vassell, who was autistic, was simply playing with a toy rifle…
Four people have been rushed to the hospital after a shooting near Miami Carol City Senior High School this afternoon. The shooting occurred after school hours and off-campus, but at least two victims are students. However, it has not been confirmed whether or not the students attended the nearby high…
It’s about time to give Miami-Dade’s northern seaside enclave a more appropriate moniker — Shady Isles Beach, perhaps?Consider: Last fall, voters in Sunny Isles Beach had three choices for city commission. One of them, Isaac Feldman, was later arrested for his role running an amazing South Beach scam involving Eastern…
Last December, the Disney-planned utopia of Celebration, Florida — a Rockwellian copy of small-town Americana, complete with calming elevator music piped around town — made headlines for its first murder and, days later, its first hours-long police standoff ending in suicide. Now, courtesy of a broker named Daniel Sebastian, Celebration…
The sad, strange saga of Ronald Miranda is finally drawing to an end.Miranda bolted from Los Banos, California, in 1980 after allegedly killing a man he found sleeping with his estranged wife. His face was splashed on “FBI’s Most Wanted” playing cards around the country, but Miranda successfully reinvented himself…
A video tip sent to the Department of Children and Families led to the arrest of 19-year-old Elizabeth Garcia over the weekend in the Florida Keys. Investigators say they were sent a video of Garcia trying to beat her 2-month-old child with a slab of concrete…
A brief car chase on I-95 last night led to Miami-Dade Police shooting and injuring a suspect. The incident began when an erratic driver refused to stop for police near NE 79th Street and Second Avenue a little after 9 p.m. The driver tried to hit an officer with his…
It was a big week for blow here in Miami, with Feds busting both the cocaine supply chain and yet another bank that accepted the illicit proceeds no questions asked.The first case involves fake passports, smuggled radio equipment, and dramatic, multi-ton ocean drops of cocaine. The second involves bankers in…
Meera Khan, a former employee of the state Department of Children and Families in Miami, was a true welfare queen. She worked for DCF for nine years and during that time faked applications to collect food stamps for herself, as well as ripped off her needy clients by pocketing fraudulent…
You think your significant other is needy? At least he or she is not staging kidnappings in order to get your attention.Twenty-one-year-old Rashell Leeann Barfield was arrested yesterday after leading her boyfriend, family, and police on a search for a white van in which she was supposedly being held captive…
That cocaine you’re planning to enjoy this weekend — because really, how else can you appreciate those amazing beats blasting on Lincoln Road — might contain more than coca. Actually, a new study says if you’re snorting it in Miami, it’s probably chock full of a compound that will eat the…
