Yesterday we wondered if there was any scam that Miamians don’t excel at? Well, it turns out you can’t even buy a lottery ticket in this town without running the risk of getting massively ripped off by a shady business owner (well, more than the lottery usually rips you off)…
Last summer’s crackdown on allegedly corrupt local mayors has netted prosecutors a two-out-of-three conviction rate. Former Homestead mayor Steve Bateman was found guilty by a jury this afternoon on two corruption charges. The verdict follows a guilty plea from former Sweetwater mayor Manuel Maroño and a not-guilty verdict for suspended…
Veteran 60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft visited Miami for a special report that aired this weekend, looking into the booming trend of identity thieves stealing personal data to scam the government out of tax returns. Instead, after hearing about Miami’s oversize role in the fraud, he ended up tackling a…
One day after police found a badly decayed body in the trunk of a missing Miami woman’s car, her family says that the medical examiner has confirmed their worst fears: Dental records from the corpse matched 28-year-old Tanya Gonzalez. The news comes a day after a wild chase in the…
A 24-year-old tourist who took a late-night stroll down the sands off of South Beach ended up running away after fighting off a man who tried to rape her. The woman and her boyfriend were walking in the area of 200 block of Ocean Drive at about 3 a.m. last…
A missing persons case took a turn for the gruesome yesterday when police found a badly decayed body in the disappeared woman’s car. That’s when the case got truly bizarre. Hours later, Miami Police got wind that the woman’s boyfriend had fled to the Florida Keys on a boat with…
Today may not technically be a holiday, but for Miami-Dade residents, it marks one of the treasured moments in the yearly calendar: Another former public official starts their corruption trial! Former Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman is the man on the stand in criminal court this morning, facing down two felony…
George Zimmerman, the man who killed unarmed Miami teenager Trayvon Martin, has allegedly threatened to kill again. Zimmerman was involved in a road-rage incident near Orlando and allegedly asked another driver, “Do you know who I am?,” undoubtedly referring to his known status as a someone who taken another person’s…
Ricky Atkins, an employee at Florida Keys Children’s Shelter in Tavernier, is behind bars after allegedly driving two teenage runaways to Miami where they were forced to work as prostitutes. On September 1, one of the girls called police to report what happened and the investigation soon turned to Atkins…
A fight at the Stellar Leadership Academy in Northwest Miami-Dade today lead to a gun going off, the victim in stable condition at a nearby hospital, and five teenage students in custody…
Two summers ago, Miami was the stage for one of the strangest FBI sting operations on record. On July 17, 2012, undercover agents set up a clandestine deal in a pricey South Beach hotel room. With hidden cameras recording his every move, an unwitting suspect carefully removed the much-coveted object…
A customer at a U-Gas station in North Miami made a grisly discovery this morning at about 5:45 a.m. The customer found a cardboard box inside a dumpster outside of the station and opened it up to find the body of a dead newborn baby inside. They immediately called 911…
Miami Police Officer Christopher Vital had a wild night last night. It started with speeding more than 100 mph on the street of Miami Beach, peaked with him kicking out the window of a Miami Beach Police cruiser, and ended with him in jail. For good measure, drugs and a…
The unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, has highlighted the tension that can build when a town with a majority black population is patrolled by a police force that is largely white. The situation in Miami is slightly more complicated. Several police forces here have higher percentages of black officers than their…
This week’s feature is a modern-day art heist mystery worthy of the silver screen. It’s got a power-hungry president, a missing national treasure, an ensemble of shady middlemen out to make a fortune, and a beautiful FBI agent intent on cracking the case. But — spoiler alert — one thing…
The Miami Beach location of one of Miami’s most infamous strip clubs has been forced to shut its doors.
Kevin Adorno wanted to combine his bucket list with his engagement. The 28-year-old graphic designer from Uniondale, Connecticut, always wanted to bike down the East Coast from Maryland to Miami, and he decided that once he arrived here he’d propose to his girlfriend. Unfortunately, Adorno met a sad end when…
Thirty-year-old Lytisa Small says that last November she was talking to her ex-boyfriend, Irrington Roberts-Isaacs, outside his home on NW 140th Street in Opa-locka when another woman approached. The woman, a friend of both Roberts-Isaacs and his current girlfriend’s, was incensed that Small was speaking to Roberts-Isaacs and smacked her…
First it was 228 Miami-Dade police officers facing layoffs, then it was 110. Now, apparently, it’s zero. At a press conference yesterday, Miami-Dade County mayor Carlos Gimenez said that no officer job cuts were now on the table for next year’s budget after he had come to new agreements with…
For the second time this year, a member of the Miami Fire Department has been arrested for sex crimes involving a minor. Forty-eight-year-old Miami Fire Rescue Lt. Ramon Marti was arrested yesterday for sending explicit pictures of himself to an undercover detective he believed to be a 15-year-old girl…
Don’t believe everything you see on Snapchat, kids. Earlier this month 15-year-old Patrick Lopez from the Florida Keys received a video on Snapchat of his cousin holding a large amount of money. Naturally, the boy decided to round up four of his friends and rob his own cousin…
Hugo Chávez could have had his odalisque if it weren’t for those damn Nazis. In a rare interview, FBI agents say that they delayed the return of a stolen $4 million Henri Matisse painting to Venezuela because of concerns that the painting had originally been looted by Nazis during World…
