May 9, 2008 10:51 pm US/Eastern
Developer In House Of Lies Case Pleads Guilty
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
A man involved in the Miami scandal involving developers who charged millions of dollars for the creation of affordable housing, but never delivered, pleaded guilty, and he says he's ready to start giving names.
Oscar Rivero reached a plea deal with the State Attorney's Office, avoiding a prison sentence that could've been up to 15 years long. He will serve 21 months instead, after pleading guilty to one count of Grand Theft. He admitted to using $700,000 in money designated to Miami-Dade County housing to buy himself a house. He agreed to cooperate with investigators on giving them names of more people he says were involved in the scandal.
Rivero and his company took up to $1.6 million from the Miami-Dade Housing Agency, meant to build affordable housing, and instead used it for his own lifestyle.
There are six such cases under review facing possible prosecution, but because Rivero is willing to talk, the number of cases may widen rapidly, and some speculate it might be Miami's biggest public corruption scandal to date.
"If you were one of the greedy ones who stole money and squandered it, when it really should have really gone for the needy people that needed housing to this community, which is such a desperate need, yeah, I don't think you'll be sleeping very well tonight," said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle.
The scandal originally came about after
CBS4 News Partner the Miami Herald published their award-winning investigation
House Of Lies, in which they exposed how projects went unfinished and even pieces of land were left vacant, where public housing should have been built.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed material for this report)
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