Crusader upends tiny South Florida town

Since Fane Lozman's arrival in North Bay Village,

its mayor and 3 commissioners have been arrested.

 

Article Courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel

By Maya Bell
Posted August 8, 2004

 

NORTH BAY VILLAGE -- Almost all the tumult convulsing this three-island town of 7,000 -- the crude cartoons, the departure of the police chief, the arrests of the mayor and three commissioners, the recall campaigns, the shouting and the whispers -- started with the desire to do a good deed.

Arriving two Januarys ago from the cold Chicago winter to thaw out on a houseboat, Fane Lozman wanted to help his 80-year-old neighbor install an aluminum wheelchair ramp at the village marina where they lived, something Clement Mikelis had been pestering his landlord about for months.

Heck, Lozman thought, he would even spring for the ramp. After all, Mikelis lived on a fixed income, while Lozman, 43, a market trader and software entrepreneur, didn't think twice about spending $600 on a loud Versace shirt or donating a few grand to the pelican refuge up the street.

But when Lozman and Mikelis asked Al Coletta about the ramp, the two said their landlord exploded.

"He said, . . . 'I'm evicting you,' " said Mikelis' lawyer, Matthew Dietz.

"He said, 'You're not touching my . . . dock,' " Lozman said.

Coletta, an influential and litigious real-estate investor who in his eviction letter accused Lozman of damaging marina property, would not comment. But 17 months later, Mikelis still doesn't have his ramp

 ‘They've tried to discredit me and run me out of town, but who's the last man standing?' says Fane Lozman of his anti-corruption crusade that directly or indirectly led to the arrests of North Bay Village's mayor and 3 commissioners and the police chief's departure.

and is still fighting his eviction in court.

And North Bay Village, once known as Sin City for the mobsters and prostitutes who plied their trade on the causeway, is still reeling from the havoc Lozman has left in his wake.

After moving to another marina, the slim, 6-foot-4-inch former Marine Corps aviator embarked on a mission to find out just who Coletta was. Searching public records and tugging on loose threads, he eventually unraveled City Hall. Since Lozman's arrival, the mayor and three commissioners have been arrested. The charges range from bribery to violations of the state "Sunshine" laws, which prohibit elected officials from discussing the public's business in private.

The police chief, a 43-year veteran of the Miami-Dade Police Department, also departed during a state investigation into allegations that he had penned vulgar cartoons that began turning up in Lozman's mailbox.

"It reminds me of Watergate," Lozman said, sitting in his boathouse bedroom/office amid a clutter of boxes and piles of documents. "Watergate was a little break-in that led to the downfall of the president. Here, a little handicap ramp led to the downfall of most of the major players in North Bay Village."

Even Joe Centorino, chief of the corruption division at the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office, finds the situation in North Bay Village remarkable.

"We don't often see, within the space of one year, four members of one board removed," Centorino said. "That's unusual, even in Miami-Dade County."

'Negative energy'

For many villagers, it's just more of the same turf wars, rifts and intrigue that always have characterized this little town on a strip of land in Biscayne Bay between Miami and Miami Beach.

"Look at the history," said 10-year resident Crystal Loiacono, a massage therapist who sold her condo and is getting out. "This place is in a vortex. It has a lot of negative energy."

In the 1950s and '60s, the village was a well-known mob hangout, boasting the latest last call in the county. Causeway clubs closed at 7 a.m., turning the village into party central and attracting the likes of Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and what Miami-Dade Clerk of the Courts Harvey Ruvin calls "people of the night."

Ruvin was elected mayor in 1968 with a mandate to clean up the town. That was a tall order. Just the year before, Anthony "Big Tony" Esperti gunned down Thomas "The Enforcer" Altamura at a popular causeway steakhouse. Authorities blamed the slaying on a mob gang war.

Ruvin said he soon learned the village police chief hadn't made a prostitution arrest in four years because he allegedly doubled as the rental agent for the complex where "the working girls" lived. Ruvin's first act as mayor was to fire the chief.

"It was like living in a Damon Runyon story," Ruvin said, referring to the New York writer known for his colorful characters.

Stock-market guru

Lozman, a University of Miami grad who holds a patent on a stock-quote-display system called ScanShift, is not responsible for all of the latest tumult. But he was the catalyst for much of it, which was the last thing on his mind when he began jetting between Chicago and his hometown of Miami for some R & R.

A stock-market guru often quoted by the national business media, he was content to dish out quips about market volatility and equilibrium between diving forays on the speedboat he keeps moored behind his houseboat.

But after Coletta sent him an eviction letter, Lozman grew consumed with investigating the real-estate investor's long ties to City Hall. Searching news clippings and property, tax and court records, he discovered that Coletta was a well-established player in village politics and often was at odds with city officials about his development plans. Lozman also learned that one of the commissioners, Robert Dugger, was deeply in debt to Coletta. Dugger, however, had never mentioned that fact in his financial-disclosure forms, nor when voting on zoning or other city matters involving Coletta.

So Lozman started making a big stink. At City Hall meetings, he accused Dugger of corruption. He set up a Web site, dumpdugger.com, and invited villagers to send him dirt on the commissioner. And he paid a visit to the State Attorney's Office.

Last November, the commissioner was arrested and charged with one count each of official misconduct and failure to comply with financial-disclosure requirements and six counts of conflict of interest for voting on zoning and other issues in which Coletta had a stake.

His lawyer, Neil Sonnett, said Dugger would prove his innocence in the courtroom. His trial is slated for September.

Well before Dugger's arrest, Lozman had turned his sights on a second commissioner, David Fleischer, who had signed and then abruptly withdrew a resignation letter amid questions about charitable contributions. Incensed, Lozman hired an attorney to enforce the resignation.

But the issue resolved itself when, in July 2003, Fleischer was charged with bribery and threatening a public servant about his oversized pile of bulk trash. Court records say he told his garbage men he would withhold his support for their union unless they removed the pile for free. In October, he was found guilty of both charges and sentenced to four years of probation.

By then, Lozman was a City Hall fixture, regarded as a heroic anti-corruption crusader by some, an unstable zealot by others and a mystery by almost all. The small-town rumor mill started working overtime. Stories circulated in a condo newsletter, on the now-defunct SaveNorthBayVillage.com Web site and, according to state investigators, throughout the village Police Department that Lozman had a sealed arrest in Las Vegas for assaulting one of the Barbi twins, the blond bombshells who shot to fame in the 1990s after posing in Playboy.

Las Vegas police say there is no record of Lozman's having been arrested there, and the Barbi twins' lawyer disavowed any connection between Lozman and his clients. Las Vegas court records indicate Lozman was involved in a civil matter there, filed in September 2000, but that case is sealed, and Lozman will not discuss it.

Someone, however, decided to immortalize the Barbi-twin rumor in a vulgar cartoon, mailing it to Lozman in late January. It depicts Lozman performing a sex act on another man, begging him to keep the Barbi-twin incident secret.

The last man standing

By then, Lozman had a new target: Mayor Alan Dorne.

Lozman was furious that Dorne had ordered police to physically remove him from a commission meeting during one of his anti-corruption tirades. He blamed the mayor's "hands-on attitude" for encouraging village police to arrest him twice last year on minor charges.

Both cases were later dismissed.

The mayor's lawyer, Michael Tarre, would not comment.

Calling Dorne a dictator, Lozman launched another Web site, ditchdorne.com, and a recall campaign.

Soon after, Lozman received another vulgar cartoon in the mail. Deciding he couldn't trust police to investigate, he gave the letter to City Manager James Vardalis.

A former police officer, Vardalis was as stunned by the handwriting as he was by the contents. He said it looked as if it had been written by the mayor's good pal, police Chief Irving Heller.

"I was in shock," Vardalis said. "The whole thing is bizarre."

The city manager alerted investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who eventually ruled that no crimes had been committed. But in a report issued in June, investigators said the evidence clearly suggested the chief had authored the cartoons and misused a national criminal database to look into Lozman's background and the Barbi-twin rumor.

Heller, who took leave during the FDLE investigation to tend to his ailing wife and then retired, adamantly denied writing the letters. He said they were concocted by enemies at City Hall who wanted to get rid of him.

"I'll deny it till the day I die," Heller said. "It's not in my nature, but this is old history. I could care less what happens in North Bay Village. Time goes on."

The mayor, meanwhile, was very unhappy with Vardalis for contacting the FDLE without his knowledge and, according to court records, began meeting secretly with fellow commissioners to line up the votes to fire the manager at their March 16 commission meeting.

When Vardalis got wind of his planned ouster, he alerted the State Attorney's Office, which dispatched an investigator to the village, disrupting the planned vote. A month later, the mayor and another commissioner, Armand Abecassis, were charged with violating the "Sunshine" laws. Their trials are pending.

"It was kind of scary," Vardalis said. "Almost like an organized-crime-type thing: We're going to get you for calling the cops."

Another commissioner, George Kane, was given immunity for disclosing the plot, which still irks Lozman. He says Kane's participation in the "Sunshine" violation makes him unfit for office.

Launching into another of his trademark anti-corruption diatribes, Lozman makes it clear he isn't ready to rest just yet.

"They've tried to discredit me and run me out of town," he said, "but who's the last man standing?"


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