| The Verdict |
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| Suarez imprisoned despite acquittal
BY ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff alinhardt@keysnews.com A former Key West Public Works superintendent was sentenced to 3 and half years in state prison Wednesday for violating his probation, even though he was acquitted on federal charges of defrauding the IRS. Gilbert Suarez should be jailed because of his arrest in the IRS case, in which federal jurors in December found him not guilty of helping Monroe County Detention Center inmates submit false income tax returns, Circuit Judge Mark Jones ruled. Suarez, 48, is criminally liable for violating his probation, Assistant State Attorney Mark Wilson told the judge, and asked him to sentence Suarez to the maximum five years. After being acquitted, Suarez signed a legal document stating he violated his probation and the state has enough evidence to convict him of that, Wilson said. "Everything has been a struggle and I've been doing my probation, trying to find work, and then I get hit with this federal indictment," Suarez told the judge. "I didn't do it. I'm sorry I have to be here, but I thought I would be done after [the trial]." Suarez was serving five years' probation on a 2006 grand theft conviction for stealing coins from city parking meters while employed as the Public Works superintendent. He was arrested on the IRS charges in March 2010. The 42-month sentence Jones handed down Wednesday shocked members of the Suarez family who were in the courtroom, as well as Suarez's attorney, Regional Conflict Counsel attorney Rene Palomino, who had asked the judge to sentence Suarez to a year in the county jail with credit for the 13 months he already spent locked up awaiting resolution to the matter. "It's OK, Gilbert. God knows!" Suarez's wife, Rhea Suarez, loudly stated as her husband was being fingerprinted in the courtroom. The judge told the family he would not tolerate outbursts, as he had given them an opportunity to speak on Gilbert's behalf, but they had declined. "I didn't yell at the judge, and for him to imply that I was disruptive is wrong," Rhea Suarez said outside court. "I don't have any respect for Judge Jones or the court system. I was positive [Suarez] was going to be released today. Stupid me, I thought the judge would apologize for keeping him in jail for 13 months after he was found not guilty in federal court on the IRS charges." Palomino said he plans to file an appeal. "Any normal case such as this would typically result in no more than a year," Palomino said outside court. "I respectfully disagree with the state's position and I believe politics played a role in this decision." Palomino declined to comment further. Jones, who presided over the coin case, told Suarez he had received a favorable plea agreement on that charge, only to find himself accused of stealing from taxpayers once again. After his conviction in the coin case, Suarez moved his family to DeLand, where he has been working construction and odd jobs, his wife said. Federal and state prosecutors said Gilbert's brother, Danilo Suarez, was one of the ringleaders in the IRS scheme among inmates at the Monroe County jail on Stock Island. A federal judge in Miami in January sentenced Danilo Suarez to five years' prison and ordered him to pay $58,000 restitution. Gilbert Suarez's sister and niece in September pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to defraud the IRS. Belkis Mendez and Sandra Suarez, respectively, were sentenced to six months in prison and three years of supervised release as part of plea agreements with prosecutors in November. (See notes in RED) |
| Sandra testified for the Feds and got a reduced sentence of 6 months house arrest with three years supervised probation. |
| Full Acquittal for Defendant in Federal Criminal Tax Scam
Deal Announcement 20 December 2010 Miami, USA, 20 December 2010 Baker & McKenzie partner Bill Roppolo received a not guilty verdict last week before Judge Martinez for client Gilbert Suarez. Mr. Suarez was charged in a four count indictment; one count of consipiracy to commit tax fraud and three counts of tax fraud. Mr. Ed ODonnell of ODonnell & ODonnell was co-counsel. The US Attorney's Office alleged that Mr. Suarez assisted his brother, an inmate at the Monroe County jail, in a scheme to file fraudulent tax returns for inmates at the jail. The case received a joint investigation by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigations Division. IRS doesn't screen most prisoners' tax returns. A review found that 88 percent of the 287,918 returns filed by prisoners by late March of this year were not screened for potential fraud. At trial, the fact that Mr. Suarez received official checks from the Monroe County Detention facility helped prove that everything appeared official to him. During Attorney Roppolos cross examination, the jails head of finance admitted that the jail reviewed, approved and processed the proceeds of the tax fraud because it thought the returns were legitimate. In closing, Attorney ODonnell compared the background and training of the jail's head of finance to Mr. Suarez's, and argued that if the jail thought the returns were legitimate then certainly Mr. Suarez was reasonable to think the same. |
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| April 6 th 2011 |
| Arrested for a charge of VOP from 2006 case. Regarding the Federal case he was found innocent of said charge. 24 points and still sent too prison. Sandra is supposed to be on house arrest but goes to Miami every weekend...you can check her out at Teasers in Key West. Becky is doing her 6 months...Danny got 5 years. What about the others at the jail involved? Gilbert gets screwed because of the politics of Key West and the fact he had only a few more months left on his 5 years of probation. Odd that during a high influential Federal trial he was acquitted and the City was up in arms so to speak on that verdict. They were determined to violate him and they did. |
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| Created April 12 th 2011 by Cynthia Martz Rivera Archived articles and comments |
| Suarez case tough to prosecute
(2006) BY CHRIS TITTEL Citizen Staff KEY WEST - There was no evidence to send former Public Works Superintendent Gilbert Suarez to jail or force him to pay back thousands of dollars detectives suspect he stole from parking meters over a four-year period, prosecutors said Thursday. After Suarez reached a plea agreement with the State Attorney's Office, Circuit Court Judge Mark Jones sentenced him on Monday to five years probation on grand theft charges for stealing change from parking meters on May 15, 2005. Suarez, 44, also was sentenced to two years probation on drug charges for cocaine, marijuana and paraphernalia found during a search of his home. The sentences will run concurrently. Suarez agreed to forfeit about $11,000 in vacation and sick pay from the city as restitution. Without proof that Suarez took large amounts of money, however, Chief Assistant State Attorney Jeff Overby said there is no way his office could have built any better case than it did. "The city's own records do not support conclusively how much money, if any, is missing," he said. "If admissible evidence were to come to our attention that Mr. Suarez committed other crimes , we would prosecute him for those crimes." Suarez was arrested on May 15 after police officers, responding to a tip from one of Suarez's co-workers, placed marked quarters in meters along Whitehead Street. Officers said they watched Suarez empty the meters on a Sunday and return to his home. When detectives interviewed him at his home a short time later, they found $2,078.66 in coins in Suarez's work truck, including $28.75 in specially marked quarters. They also found unused quarter wrappers, small amounts of drugs and some drug paraphernalia, according to the arrest warrant. Tellers at a bank and a credit union told detectives that Suarez, his wife, Rhea, and his mother, Belkies, would bring about $2,000 in quarters each week and exchange them for cash. According to the State Attorney's Office, neither of the financial institutions keeps records on coins that are exchanged for cash. Without records, Overby said, prosecutors would have to rely on the tellers' memories of the dates, times and amounts involved in the coin exchanges. "While anyone may suspect that Mr. Suarez took other quarters, we have no admissible evidence to prove that he, in fact, misappropriated any other monies," Overby said. Chief Assistant State Attorney Catherine Vogel said that she called City Manager Julio Avael in late March to ask for city financial records that would show the amounts of money that had been lost. "I wanted to be sure there was no stone left unturned," Vogel said. "Julio Avael told me that the city could not document the losses." Without knowing the amounts lost, Vogel told Avael that the best they could hope for in terms of restitution would be to get Suarez to forfeit his right to accrued sick and vacation time, valued at $11,379.25, as part of a plea deal. Avael recalled the conversation with Vogel. "She told me they were after $11,000," Avael said. "I told her: 'We need more.' She said: 'We need proof.'" Avael said city officials who scoured financial accounts could not find any significant fluctuations in meter revenues during Suarez's tenure. "We check on a day-to-day basis how much money was deposited," he said. "We were looking at it every which way we could. We couldn't find any difference." Avael said that city Finance Director Roger Wittenberg then advised that all that the city could hope for in restitution was the $11,000-plus figure. On March 22, City Attorney Bob Tischenkel signed a one-sentence letter to Assistant State Attorney Val Winter that the city would seek $11,379.25 in restitution. On Thursday, Avael told Bill Becker on U.S. 1 Radio's Morning Magazine that although he felt the amount of restitution should have been much higher, the amount ultimately was "an area that we don't have any control over." "I was consulted early on and gave my recommendations," Avael said. "Certainly, my recommendations were not heeded." Avael said on the radio show that he had discussed jail time for Suarez and a minimum of $50,000 in restitution. He later told The Citizen that he had not made that recommendation to Vogel of the State Attorney's Office. "I did not talk to Catherine Vogel about the amount," he said. "That's a situation that has to do with the attorneys and the court system, which I was not a part of. Certainly, the attorneys, the ones who made that decision, obviously it had to do with the type of case that we had." Avael told The Citizen that he wanted to seize property that Suarez had allegedly bought with city parking meter funds and set restitution at $100,000. He also said that the city has no plans to rehire Suarez. Suarez's sentence of five years probation on third-degree grand theft charges is the maximum probation he could get without having to go to prison. According to the State Attorney's Office, Suarez was not eligible for prison under a points system reserved for those who are tried on felony charges. The system takes into consideration the suspect's primary offense, additional offenses, whether or not a victim was injured and any prior record that the suspect might have. Points are assigned to each factor. It takes 44 points to send a suspect to jail: Suarez scored only 17.6 points. Of the 17.6 points, 16 were assigned to the primary offense, possession of cocaine, while 0.2 points were assigned to each of the additional offenses of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia. The additional charge of grand theft yielded 1.2 points. ctittel@keysnews.com |
