Florida City Mayor Otis Wallace with Mayor Steven Bateman celebrating
From Miami New Times article: Darin Baldwin was tired of staying silent. A few days after Thanksgiving in 2009, the 14-year veteran of Florida City government stuffed four envelopes with everything he knew about Otis Wallace. He scrawled the addresses of the FBI, Miami-Dade Police Department, Gov. Charlie Crist, and the county commission. Then he dropped the envelopes into the mail.
For more than two years, only a handful of individuals inside those organizations knew of Baldwin's letter and his later testimony to investigators. But the documents, obtained by New Times, contain explosive allegations against Wallace. In them, Baldwin says the mayor traded his vote for land he later flipped for $1 million. Baldwin also claims that members of Wallace's administration took hundreds of thousands in bribes that were later passed to the mayor. Prosecutors never charged him, but the documents and New Times' own two-month investigation raise troubling questions about Wallace's administration.
On December 11, 2009, Baldwin secretly met with investigators in a warehouse across from Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Doral and spilled his guts. In a sworn statement to the FBI and Miami-Dade Police's Public Corruption Investigations Bureau, Baldwin said he had served as Florida City's public works director for eight years but was fed-up with corruption.
Baldwin began by describing how Wallace had allegedly sold his vote to Steve Torcise Sr., a real estate developer who owned land in Florida City. According to Baldwin, the two made a deal: If Wallace voted to rezone 100 acres of land — and convinced commissioners to do the same — Torcise would sell the mayor a chunk for the cut-rate price of $100,000. Once rezoned, both men would resell the land for a huge profit.
Baldwin began by describing how Wallace had allegedly sold his vote to Steve Torcise Sr., a real estate developer who owned land in Florida City. According to Baldwin, the two made a deal: If Wallace voted to rezone 100 acres of land — and convinced commissioners to do the same — Torcise would sell the mayor a chunk for the cut-rate price of $100,000. Once rezoned, both men would resell the land for a huge profit.
"Torcise gave the mayor ten acres of land in return for [getting] the other hundreds of acres rezoned," Baldwin told investigators. "The mayor, in turn, after he got it rezoned, sold it for a million dollars."
Baldwin's testimony didn't end with accusations over a shady land deal. He also claimed developers and businesses routinely were asked for bribes. When they needed permits or contracts, businesses would approach the community development director, Bill Kiriloff, and he'd refer them to Tomas Mesa, a former building and zoning director. Mesa then demanded anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 to ensure the deal went through. Some of the money was then kicked back to the mayor, Baldwin alleged.
Often, Kiriloff would bypass lower bids to reward companies that paid bribes, Baldwin continued. The corruption was easy to hide, he testified: "For various reasons, if they didn't dot an i or cross a t or they left out a paper, they'll disqualify someone."
Finally, Baldwin told investigators that Mark Ben-Asher, the finance director, was complicit in the scam, falsifying documents to benefit the mayor and funneling illicit funds to Kiriloff and Mesa. "He's the right-hand man to the mayor," Baldwin said.
Finally, there is also evidence backing up Baldwin's claim that finance director Mark Ben-Asher laundered bribe money flowing into Florida City. According to investigators' records, Ben-Asher's own former payroll manager, Dorothy Henderson, said large sums of city money were inexplicably paid to companies owned by or in partnership with Mesa and Kiriloff.
Henderson declined to comment for this story. Ben-Asher denies any involvement in bribery and says he's named because he was "instrumental" in getting Baldwin fired. "So I can expect some fallout," he says. He also says Henderson was just a "bookkeeper [who] would not have the ability to determine what transfers... were improper."
Wallace, meanwhile, insists he and his administration are clean. Asked what he thinks of Henderson's and Rivera's statements corroborating Baldwin's claims of corruption, the mayor says, "The word bullshit comes to mind. It's a fairy tale."
The evidence wasn't enough for prosecutors. On January 11, 2011, two detectives from Miami-Dade's public corruption unit met with Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Senior to discuss the case. They asked the prosecutor to subpoena Wallace's bank statements, which would "provide the necessary evidence needed to verify the allegations," Det. Ashley Thomas wrote in a memo.
But Senior refused. Instead, he said the statute of limitations had expired on many of the charges and there wasn't enough evidence to proceed. The case was closed February 22, 2011.
But Senior refused. Instead, he said the statute of limitations had expired on many of the charges and there wasn't enough evidence to proceed. The case was closed February 22, 2011.
There's a bloody coda to Baldwin's accusations. On November 10, two days before his 62nd birthday, Bill Kiriloff was found slumped over the wheel of his black sedan in Florida City's Fasulo Park with a hole in his head. He was wrapped in a blanket. Two silver handguns rested on the city official's lap, and an empty can of Heineken lay on the floor in the back. Police ruled the death a suicide.
Kiriloff had long faced allegations of drug use and corruption before he became a member of Wallace's inner circle. While working as a Charlotte County administrator, his secretary twice found cocaine on his desk. Kiriloff was arrested February 12, 1989, and pleaded no contest to the drug charge.
Just a few years later, Kiriloff was hired in Florida City. Wallace says then-city manager Dick Anderson hired the ex-con. The mayor also claims he learned of Kiriloff's past only in December 2003, when Gov. Jeb Bush pardoned him. By then, Kiriloff had spent "ten to 12 years at the city doing a good job," Wallace says.
Marlene Kiriloff, Bill's ex-wife, says she knew of his cocaine and gambling problems long before he left her in 1980. After their divorce, people began asking her if he had taken bribes. Eventually, she began wondering the same thing herself.
She was shocked by her ex-husband's apparent suicide, but not by news of investigations in Florida City. "After all his problems, there must have been somebody holding a candle for him to get into government again," she says.
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