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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