Word: stating
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...could bring down Florida politicians as well as investors - because Rothstein funneled millions of his allegedly ill-gotten dollars to pols and parties, especially the state's GOP, often in ways that may have violated campaign-finance laws. (Prosecutors allege, for example, that he laundered political contributions through large bonuses that he paid to members of his law firm, which has since collapsed.) Florida political analyst Sean Foreman of Barry University in Miami doesn't think the scandal will cause much fallout for those, like Crist, who have returned the money in a timely fashion. (Since Rothstein's indictment last...
...which he got them to plow money into lucrative, securitized lawsuit settlements that usually turned out to be nonexistent. The alleged crime wasn't as massive as New York City financier Bernard Madoff's recent $50 billion Ponzi con, but the Mini-Madoff scheme has slapped the Sunshine State, already reeling from myriad corruption scandals of late, with one of its darkest stains in decades. "So many frauds have been committed here recently," says William Scherer, a Fort Lauderdale attorney representing some of Rothstein's alleged victims. "But Scott's audacity is one of a kind...
...Charles Zelden, a history professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale and an expert on judicial politics in Florida, says Rothstein could still "create a real mess" in the state's public arena. He doubts that Rothstein - who could be facing life in prison on the charges of fraud, racketeering and money laundering leveled against him - would plead guilty if he hadn't struck a beneficial deal with the feds. They in turn almost certainly expect Rothstein "to name names," says Zelden, not only of those who might have aided the Ponzi scheme, "but of politicians who may have...
...likely to name more Republicans" than Democrats because Rothstein gave the GOP the lion's share of his political donations - more than $600,000 from Rothstein and his law firm in the past five years. (Florida's Democratic Party got about $200,000.) "Republicans are the ones running the state today," Zelden notes...
Under that scenario, Florida's mess also becomes the country's in at least one respect. The state's GOP Senate primary contest between Crist and former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio is widely considered a focal point of this year's internecine war between moderates and conservatives for control of the Republican Party. Should the Rothstein scandal leak into that powder keg, it could exacerbate what already promises to be a particularly nasty campaign on both sides before the August primary. (See the 25 crimes of the century...