Atif Mehana came to the United States from Egypt two decades ago. The short, clean-shaven 58-year-old spent more than a decade selling seafood to tourists on Miami’s bayfront. He saved enough to open a second eatery in 2008. But now he’s broke. Who’s to blame? He says Yelp.com, the megapopular…
It was 2 a.m. when Sean Pamphilon’s phone rang in New York. The Fox Sports television producer picked up and heard a soft, familiar voice. On the other end was Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams, who was standing outside a tent somewhere in Australia. Williams was, as Pamphilon puts…
A day after a forensic auditor told the Deerfield Beach Commission he’d found evidence of favoritism and fraud by officials in the city’s Community Development Division, the city has asked the Broward Sheriff’s Office to take custody of computers that belonged to two officials named in the audit report.According to…
Larry Clemons almost threw up this morning when he read in the paper that Purvis Young, who died yesterday at 67 of cardiac arrest, passed away penniless. “That’s absolutely disgusting. When I was there for Purvis, he had money,” says Clemons, a longtime friend and publisher of the artist as…
Remember this guy? It’s Chris Crocker, who used most of his 15 minutes of fame pleading to the internet to “Leave Britney alone!” He’ll be the celebrity guest at the Living Room in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Friday night. Not since Aaron Carter appeared at Slice Pizzeria has the city…
Miami general contractor Donna Milo threw her hat into the ring this morning in the US 20th congressional district race against incumbent Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Milo’s family, her website says, fled Cuba in the 1960s. She got married, raised a couple of kids. She runs her own small business…
Greg Bryant raises reticulated pythons, the longest snakes in the world. From the Retic Ranch in Delray Beach, he breeds animals that can grow to 20 feet and top 100 pounds and sells them around the world. His livelihood is now threatened by federal legislation, proposed last year by Florida…
William Schramm, the 65-year-old man who was struck by a Fort Lauderdale police cruiser on Las Olas Boulevard on Saturday, has died from his injuries.According to the Fort Lauderdale police news release, at 12:04 a.m., Schramm’s bicycle was eastbound on East Las Olas Bouelvard, making a left turn onto Isle…
This week’s New Times feature about Scott Storch, a music mogul from Plantation, has a little bit of everything: money, cocaine, and hip-hop backdrops. Gus Garcia-Roberts looks into what made a lucrative career go horribly wrong.Sean Pamphilon, friend of Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams, is releasing a documentary called Run…
A forensic auditor told the Deerfield Beach Commission last night that he found fault with nearly every transaction he analyzed between the city and the recipients of public housing dollars. But for the purposes of this post, I’ll highlight the one case that has a little bit of everything: the…
At one point during the commission of his $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, Scott Rothstein allegedly wrote an email in which he gave a perverse twist on the story of Robin Hood. He wrote that he stole from the rich and gave to the richer. The Rothstein quote was supplied by lawyer…
Check out this video, courtesy of FAU Owl Access, from the FAU versus Western Kentucky University (WKU) baseball game on April 17. Apparently the two teams got bored during a two-hour-and-13-minute rain delay in Boca Raton and decided to entertain the small crowd with a few dance moves. Maybe the dance…
God help us, Chaz Stevens has been appointed to the board of the Deerfield Beach Housing Authority. Not even a very loud “No!” from Commissioner Marty Popelsky (at 1:20 in the video above) could stop Stevens’ rise to power.Of course, the activist blogger (he prefers “genius”) played a crucial role…
The Palm Beach County Teacher’s Union just voted “no confidence” in Superintendent Art Johnson. Well, here at the Juice, we’re voting “no confidence” in Johnson’s graduation speeches.Seem a bit odd? The only thing that’s odd are his subject matters during a high school student’s one shining hour before becoming fresh…
Here’s what’s going on in your South Florida neighborhood this morning:1. Three escaped Louisiana convicts who were arrested in Miami are being accused of kidnapping 29-year-old Vincent Binder, a Jupiter High School graduate. Apparently Binder approached them asking to buy marijuana at a gas station up in Tallahassee. The trio…
Russell Adler, former law partner of Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, is back. Adler, a Bova Prime regular who also vacationed to New York with Rothstein, filed court papers yesterday to replace Peter Sachs as attorney for former Judge Larry Seidlin and his wife, Belinda Ray Seidlin. Judge Seidlin, of course, famously presided…
Deerfield Beach officials who administer home loans and grants to low-income residents engage in “favoritism” and “suspected fraud,” according to statements made at this evening’s commission meeting by forensic auditor Michael Kessler.”The entire process of awarding funds to deserving individuals should have been administered in a documented, precise, calculated, and…
He found Purvis Young in 1992, sitting on a milk crate under a Miami overpass, sketching. Young never drove or had a driver’s license but instead would bike around Overtown, stopping to draw people he saw on the streets. In the process, he had documented the riots of the early…
UPDATED: OK, kidzzzz, get ready for a deluge of raw material from the Scott Rothstein case. I can’t physically get it to you right now, but there’s a whole lot of interesting new stuff to report. One little fun fact is that one of the nicknames that Frank Preve, who…
An alleged burglary and homicide in Belle Glade yesterday afternoon was the third in a string of violent crimes in the impoverished city in the past ten days.According to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, a man in a black hoodie and a ski mask shot and killed an employee…
For too long did grandmothers of yesteryear express their anger quietly, perhaps by “accidentally” missing a cross-stitch on this year’s Christmas sweater (and once there’s a run, there’s no saving Rudolph).That wasn’t Vicki Ryder’s style. For the past few years, the 67-year-old founder of the South Florida Raging Grannies has…
