Politics

MIAMI (CBS4) ― In June, 2007, police, prosecutors and Miami leaders held a news conference in city hall to announce the arrests of 14 city employees, charged with operating a private business on city time. Mug shots of the employees were put on display. Perp walks were conducted for television news cameras. The city, and State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, wanted to drive home a message that corruption would not be tolerated.

But two years later, prosecutors have executed plea bargains that will see members of the group, known as "The Firm," avoid spending any time in jail.

The employees of the city's Capital Improvements department were charged with organized fraud and racketeering. Investigators said they had used city computers, city supplies, city vehicles and city time to operate a private engineering and design consulting firm, while leaving their city work undone. Officials said the employees took city pay they had not earned, and allowed millions of dollars worth of delays and cost overruns to accumulate on city projects they had neglected.

"They were 'the firm' that daily stole money from the city of Miami," State Attorney Rundle said at the 2007 news conference. "They used the city's own supplies and facilities to steal from the taxpayers."

"They will be dealt with swiftly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," added a grim-faced Mayor Manny Diaz at the time.

In recent weeks, however, State Attorney Rundle's office quietly agreed to plea bargains that will allow the defendants to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, pay $13,500 each in restitution and court costs, and not go to jail. Under the felony racketeering charges they had been facing, penalties could have ranged up to 90 years in prison.

"It is a joke, it's a farce," City Commissioner Tomas Regalado said of the plea bargains Monday. "It is an embarrassment to the city and the State Attorney's office."

Regalado said the settlement with the former employees gives a green light to corruption. It sends a message that "you can be a corrupt employee and you can do whatever you want, and if you make a deal and go quietly, you won't go to jail," Regalado said.

Attorney Jose Quinon, who represented one of the accused employees, said the state simply didn't have the evidence to prove a case of organized fraud. "This case should have never been brought criminally," Quinon told CBS4 News. "This should have been handled administratively. It was a personnel matter."

As "exempt" employees - rather than hourly workers - Quinon said the defendants did not have to work a specified number of hours per week on city business. Quinon said the employees were entitled to their salaries and said that his client, Jose Briz, often worked more than 40 hours a week for which he was not compensated. The defense attorney said that, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the investigation, prosecutors were, "too far down the river, were committed, and they arrested everybody. And now I think it's somewhat embarrassing to the State Attorney to have to plead a case like this down to a misdemeanor."

Ed Griffith, a spokesman for State Attorney Rundle, said the racketeering case against the defendants "began to fall apart" as soon as it was learned that a city policy guaranteed them their full salary "whether they worked one hour or forty."

Griffith told CBS4 News that prosecutors had hoped that some of the defendants would agree to cooperate and testify against the others. "That didn't happen," Griffith said.

City Manager Pete Hernandez said he was informed of the plea agreements but did not approve or object to them. "The State Attorney made the determination after evaluating the case," Hernandez said. The city manager told CBS4 News that the final outcome was still "quite serious" for the former employees. "They will have a criminal record that they will to deal with for the rest of their lives."

Mayor Manny Diaz, who promised prosecution "to the fullest extent of the law" two years ago, did not return CBS4's calls seeking comment Monday.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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