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May 28, 2009 12:11 am US/Eastern
I-Team: Exploiting Dead Relatives to Avoid Taxes
MIAMI (CBS4 I-TEAM) ―
Between 1990 and 2007, Maria De Los Angeles Grande avoided paying nearly $40,000 in property taxes on her Hialeah home by illegally using a special exemption reserved for the severely disabled, according to prosecutors.
Grande, 53, was arrested on April 30 and charged with four counts of third-degree theft and one count of organized fraud.
Her father, Julian Grande, the original owner of the house, was a quadriplegic and qualified for the special exemption. But Julian Grande died in 1990 and, according to investigators, Maria Grande continued to take the exemption, even though she knew she was no longer entitled to it.
"She understood that the exemption status on the house should have been changed after the death of her father and did not report the death of her father to the [Property Appraiser] to avoid paying property taxes," wrote Jennifer Chirolis, an investigator with the county's Inspector General's Office.
Grande could not be reached for comment. Calls to her attorney were not returned.
But Grande's case is not unique. The
CBS4 I-Team has learned that more arrests could follow in the coming days as the Inspector General and the Miami-Dade State Attorney examine other cases in which family members continued to take the disability exemption even though the disabled homeowner died years earlier.
The IG identified at least 42 houses in which the qualifying homeowner was dead. In 2007 alone, the loss of revenue on those houses cost the county more than $400-thousand in taxes. The total loss over the years would almost certainly run into the millions.
But in addition to fraud there was also incompetence. And the IG blamed the property appraiser's office for failing to catch the abuse on its own.
"The OIG investigation found that with regard to the [disability] exemption, the Property Appraiser's performance of its record keeping duties did not comply with requirements set by Florida Law," the IG wrote in its report on the program. "In addition, the Property Appraiser did not employ readily available techniques to identify properties that no longer qualified for the [disability] exemption. Finally, the Property Appraiser has not made adequate efforts to institute controls designed to detect and prevent exemption fraud."
The IG report noted that in at least half the cases, family members actually did notify the county that the person who qualified for exemption had died, but the appraiser's staff failed to update the records.
And the IG wondered why the property appraiser didn't simply check the list of those receiving special exemptions against death certificates every year.
Pedro Garcia was elected Property Appraiser several months ago and inherited the problems outlined by the Inspector General. He said he has moved quickly to correct many of the mistakes of the past and that he has at least six members of his staff reviewing the exemptions looking for fraud.
"We are receiving a lot of leads on exemptions that people believe are a fraud out there," he said. "We will not allow anybody to take advantage of all the taxpayers of Miami Dade County."
He said he has already placed tax liens against the 42 properties identified by the Inspector General.
"I can tell you this much, it won't happen again," he said.
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