The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: The King of Coconut Grove

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Doug Cox developed land and homes in Coconut Grove. However, he kept the down payment of potential buyers and canceling the sales, defrauding investors and buyers. Michael Coyne was one of those potential buyers. He joins Billy Corben to talk about the experience of being swindled. Ron DeSantis gave $8 million to Jorge Mas and David Beckham for infrastructure projects around what will be Inter Miami FC's new soccer stadium. Field of Schemes author Neil deMause joins us to talk about it. Plus...Wheel of Despair returns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please drink responsibly smirnoff number 21 vodka distilled from grain 40% alcohol volume The Smirnoff company, New York, New York. Please do not share with anyone under legal drinking age. It's a tale as old as time, Roy, the real estate hustle in Florida. as old as time, Roy, the real estate hustle in Florida. And most recently, of course, we experienced during the pandemic, a kind of a gold rush, if you will, of people coming from New York, Chicago, the West Coast to move to Miami. It's what everybody wanted to do, get a piece of the Florida dream.

And of course, that's when the schemers and scammers and hustlers and conmen come out of the woodwork. But enough about Mayor Francis Suarez. What we are talking about is the self-proclaimed King of Coconut Grove, one of Miami's most popular neighborhoods, also the oldest neighborhood. West Grove is the oldest neighborhood in Miami.

It in fact predates the incorporation and founding of the city. It was made up mostly of Bahamian immigrants who came here and literally built the city of Miami and found themselves on the founding documents of the city of Miami. City of Miami is one of the few cities in America that was founded by, I don't want to say a majority, but predominantly people of color on the original documents of the city, thanks to this neighborhood, Coconut Grove.

Well, it's obviously been ripe for opportunity and redevelopment by all kinds of predators, both legit and illegit, including this guy, Doug Cox, and his wife, who's an attorney. And they started developing about 20 almost two dozen lots maybe about a dozen homes built these what appear to be very beautiful nearly finished houses that were selling for well over a million dollars and they

started taking deposits on him Roy and they kept taking deposits on him on the same houses sometimes two sometimes, at least one. They quadruple sold, allegedly. And what was happening, of course, during this time, Roy, is that the value was going up. So what was happening was he's like, well, I don't wanna sell this thing for 1.2 million. I wanna sell this thing for 3 million.

So he kept canceling a sale, not refunding money, reselling it for a higher price, people putting down a higher down payment, telling buyers allegedly, oh, we'll be ready to move in in 45 to 60 days. And if you see these houses, Roy, you'd believe it. They appear like they're pretty far along in the process. You wound up with a whole lot of buyers getting good and screwed. You wound up with this guy's got partners and investors and people who loaned him money getting screwed.

We're talking about what has been alleged by one of his former, Doug Cox's former partners as being a Ponzi scheme, is what he claims in a lawsuit. And saying that this guy allegedly defrauded his investors and defrauded his buyers. One of those buyers is a refugee from New York City who moved down with his family during the pandemic to find, you know, to live his Florida dream,

to find a better home and a better life. Michael Coyne is one of the few people who, through this process, has not agreed, like some of the other buyers had, to kind of settle for whatever pennies on the dollar they can get. He's decided to fight this thing to what will no doubt be the bitter end.

And Mike basically, in my opinion, he bought the VIP Miami simulation. He has gotten like the full hashtag because Miami. VIP experience. He's getting hustled by real estate people. He's gone to the city of Miami for help. You know what happens there.

Nothing. And this is a developer Roy, who I hope you're sitting down. And if you're not, you should stand up and sit down again, just to make sure you're sitting down. When I tell you this, this developer donated $200,000 to Party poster leader. No. Mayor Francis Suarez, who always says,

How can I help? Myself. So needless to say, Mike Coyne did not get a lot of love from the city of Miami. No. Mayor Francis Suarez, who always says, how can I help myself? So needless to say, Mike Coyne did not get a lot of love from the city of Miami. He is joining us now on the Because Miami podcast. I mean, welcome and I'm sorry, bro. I mean, you didn't call me for if you were doing due diligence, you really I should have been your first call. And I would have said, don't invest in the city of Miami.

Maybe you want to look at other municipalities on incorporated Miami date, but you do not want to be in the city of Miami. Maybe you wanna look at other municipalities on incorporated Miami-Dade, but you do not wanna be in the city of Miami. You're gonna wanna invest your money in a city with a more stable government and regime. And Broward. Like Caracas is what I was thinking for Christ's sake. But Mike, what happened? What were you thinking?

I mean, you, well, I should say, what was your plan? What was your dream? Because you have a big family, you have like in-laws, like you were gonna make a big life change down here, right? You're right, Billy. I came down as a New York refugee, although my wife and I had been planning it for a while. And that was sort of more than the straw

that broke the camel's back. But certainly COVID had a lot to do with it. When we moved down, it was my wife Oksana, we had a one-year-old son, and my mother-in-law lived with us. So we moved down in 21, in January of 22, found out Oksana was pregnant with twins. Wow, congratulations. So it was sort of like, okay, well, us jamming into an apartment with Bickle is going to be challenging. We need a house. Shortly thereafter, the war broke out. My father-in-law, for a time, came to live with us, has since gone back. But we needed space. They're Ukrainian, I take it.

Correct. So we started looking and we, you know, it was a crazy time. You'd bid full offer on a house and then someone else would bid higher and you'd lose it. Eventually we found this on one of the Zillows or one of those websites. We went in, it was very quick. It was almost done. This was March of 21.

We offered full asking, which for us was one six and a quarter, is a five, five and a half, put down the 30% just under 500 grand and locked an interest rate in the threes, I think 45 days to close ish June 15 was the outside date. That was June 15 to 21. And I imagine you've moved in, you're living happily there with your in-laws and your family and all is a happy ending. I thought about squatting. Just, you know, because I mean, you laugh,

but this city and this incestuous business, political business environment in Miami. And that includes the judicial system, your bureaucrats in the government, politicians, obviously the business community, they don't give you much choice, but to break the lock and just go, you know, throw me out because we basically tried everything else. So let me ask, there was never a certificate of occupancy, the

construction never finished. It went on for years. I don't know how many times Cox sold your particular property or your house, but I mean, what ultimately happens here? How much money have you lost so far? What is the state of things? I mean, here we are three years later, you obviously, I was being facetious earlier, you did not move in, you've never taken possession of the house and you've never seen earlier you did not move in you've never taken possession of the house and you've never seen your deposit again yeah that's correct when this went into a receivership which it is now and it it started over a year ago they asked us for a claim some damages so it's hard to calculate but obviously the the real estate markets moved away from us by certain calculations.

This house has seen 100% appreciation. I don't know if that's true anymore, but it's significant. Interest rates are borrowing at over double. And there's basically very few houses left to buy. I had some employees that I wanted to move to Miami that could put on a hold. A lot of short-term rentals. They're very expensive, moving around, storage costs. And then obviously, the emotional toll on our family, it puts pressure on the marriage.

It put pressure on my wife's relationship with her parents. It's tough for the kids. You're trying to find these short-term rentals in Miami for six people, it's nearly impossible. So I mean, the financial damages are in the millions, legal fees, and then just the amount of time, Billy, like I mean, I talked to you for an hour on Monday, I'm doing this now, I mentioned to you, I work for myself for three years plus now,

we've been putting a lot of time and effort into that and I don't know how you quantify that. So you at some point finally the building department run by Ace Marrero a guy who has been credibly accused in multiple lawsuits of being part of an alleged conspiracy to target Leroy you remember the ball and chain owners. We talked a lot about that litigation against Joe Corollo. He's now being sued in his individual capacity amongst other department heads in the city

for being part of that effort to violate the constitutional rights of these private business owners. The building department had not been very helpful here until they finally came in, issued a stop work order. Leroy, you're gonna love this. This guy had submitted plans, this Dugcox for for two-story houses,

and then he built a bunch of them three-story. These are plans that were never submitted to the city, never approved by the city. He figures like, oh, I'll beg forgiveness, not ask permission. That's sort of the motto of development in Miami. But they finally did come to the city and issue a stop work order,

and then they never enforced it. The guy kept working, apparently. He continued construction, despite the fact that the city told him to stop and incidentally there was any number of things the city could have done and intervened and if he continued to ignore the city it's possible they could have taken beyond fines and legal action. It's not inconceivable that he was breaking laws that he could be arrested for at some point but there's all sorts of things they could have done, but they did nothing.

So Mike, what happens you go to the city, you ask for a meeting with, you know. Mayor Crypto Bro. What if he runs for president? With Mayor Francis Suarez, I mean. Mr. Mayor, you're brilliant, you're super smart. What happens? What does the city tell you?

What are they doing? Cause you're a part, you're now in the stew of the incestuous cesspool of corruption that, like, you're in it, dude. Like I said, this is the Grand Theft Auto Vice City full simulation here. So what happens? You go to the city for relief, or at least to alert them of what's going on here. Yeah. So just to give you some more context, we were supposed to close, like I said, June 15th of 22. Oksano was going to give birth to the twins that summer. We came up here to New England, where I'm from, to be with some family because we didn't have a place to live.

And we said, you know, we're going to move into the new house soon. And the kids are small, like we're agile. We can move around easier at that point. June 15th comes and goes. You know, my broker's calling him, I'm calling him. And finally, we had our first argument, which was probably August, September of that year. And then around Thanksgiving, I said, look, I'm sick of your shit. I'm flying back down there. And you and I are going to talk. Cox takes me through the house. He'd actually made some

progress on it. He was a very apologetic. You know, the COVID excuse, the city, all this stuff, blah, blah, blah. But things just continued to spiral. So at one point, we started contacting, I think it's John Porfiri in the city, some other folks in the city, and we started to get in touch with other buyers. Everybody was in the same situation. Others for years had been contacting Suarez, city officials, they just ignore you or do nothing. Eventually we all band together. There was an NBC news story released in September or October of 22.

All these nefarious activities continued as if it had never been released. We get in touch with Linda Robertson from the Herald. A couple of us go on record, including myself, because that was a key part to this, to put some names out there. Apparently, it's something I guess the Herald requires to give it legitimacy. That gets published, and I send a letter to Mayor Suarez with a bunch of big shots in, you know, state attorney general's office, city officials, politicians, whoever I can put on there. And we get a meeting with him. And

with these bureaucrats from the building department. So to come to your question now, we finally get face to face with Marrero. Suarez is sitting right next to me. Of course, the first thing he says is this happens everywhere. So this isn't an only in Miami thing. This happens everywhere. Sure, that's what I'm told. And Marrero's there, a couple other fairly senior people

from the city, and then some of Suarez's assistants. But eventually, we're in there for a while, we start talking through it, and there's this sort of informal working group put together. And we're like, all right, this is great Suarez. He's on the hook now. By the way, I didn't know, I was much less educated at Miami than I am now. I didn't know about all this other shit that he had going on. And he leaves the meeting. There's a couple of us, Marrero, a few other people. It turns out that, and they said to me, please stop contacting other senior folks about this.

I said, sure, if you guys, I don't give a shit, I just want the house. Long story short, they didn't do what they said they were going to do. They became difficult to get in touch with. When we followed up with records of certain requests from law, is what they call it, they're legal people, they were completely difficult to deal with. They would not provide these records. And it just went into one of those sort of abysses where basically nothing came out of it. You got ghosted by the city of Miami government. You got ghosted by the people who are supposed to be there to help you. Is that right? That's right.

Okay. So, I mean, that's, I mean, listen, if you got a bag, I know a man. I mean, Doug Cox is dumped. What is it? According to Linda Robertson in The Herald, $200,000 into Francis Suarez's lap. I don't know what vig he got on that, because I understand he got some predatory loans, it sounds like here reportedly. But let me ask you, what do you hope to happen here? Because I've got sourcing that tells me that there is apparently a federal grand jury here in the Southern District of Florida looking into this chicanery, specifically what you've experienced here. What do you hope to happen? Are you looking for indictments?

Are you looking to get a house for the amount of money that you expected to pay for it in 2021? That seems unlikely. Like, what are you hoping happens here? Well, mind you, you know, we could talk about this for hours. There's a lot of stuff that have gone into this. But, you know, we've collectively talked, you know, filed police reports against Cox and his partner, Pearl,

who he physically abused according to a police report. I mean, this guy's a piece of shit like you've never met in your life. And by the way- I'm from Miami, Mike. I don't know if you've never met anybody like him. And mind you, Billy, there's documented cases of nefarious activity by Cox for decades, people reporting stuff to the city

that him and his partner Pearl were doing. So we filed the police reports. We filed a report with the Florida Bar. We've spoken to the State Attorney General's office. The FBI has contacted certain people, not me. I have not spoken to the FBI. You know, what do I want? Well, yeah, I wanna see Cox and Pearl in prison,

but there's a lot of people who need to be held accountable in the city, in the mayor's office. This receivership's a complete of people who need to be held accountable in the city and the mayor's office. This receivership is a complete and utter joke and failure. It's a total good old boy's thing where they're handing out money to their friends. And I can get into that if you'd like. But ultimately, what I want is the house at my freaking contracted price. And you know what? If they never did this goddamn receivership, which is a total disaster,

I offer to negotiate with them over a year ago, knowing that I might have to pay a premium because there's so many creditors. And I was willing to do that. And if they had just done that with everybody, they could have saved millions and millions of dollars. But like you told me on Monday, Billy, and you're absolutely right.

Well, if they did the smart and ethical thing, and the business savvy thing, for us, they wouldn't have collected millions of dollars for themselves and their friends. So Miami is a verb, Mike, and you got the shit Miami'd out of you. And apparently you still are. I want to continue this conversation as the the situation progresses, which I have no doubt that it will from what I'm

hearing from my sources. I want to leave everybody with this though. Kevin Ware is another one of the buyers slash victims of this alleged Ponzi scheme. And his quote to Linda Robertson in the Miami Herald, this guy was a Chicago refugee during the pandemic. And he said, quote, everyone always says Miami is a dirty, dishonest, double-dealing place. Now I've experienced it firsthand. I love Miami and I'm not leaving, but holy crap, the corruption is unbelievable. Here's a guy from Chicago.

Mike, here's a guy from New York. And they're saying like, I've never seen anything like this before in my life. And that is because the only thing that is transparent here in Miami, Mike, is the corruption. Again, on behalf of Miami, I'm sorry this happened to you. I'd like to thank you, however, for paying your fair share of the corruption tax that keeps the lights on here in this city. I hope to talk to you soon.

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Sleep Number, official sleep and wellness partner of the NFL see store for details. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, consummate populist man of the people always looking out for us hardworking Floridians. You know, he's vetoed programs that would have pumped $346 million in federal money directly to Floridians to help us replace and upgrade our old ACs and heat pumps to reduce our energy bills. He vetoed that. He vetoed a $5 million program to fund groups working to end community gun violence passed by the legislature. Boom, he vetoed it. This year, he vetoed all of the state's $32 million in art and culture grants.

That impacts thousands of jobs and estimated billions of dollars and economic impact, vetoed it all. He vetoed $205 million in stormwater, wastewater and sewer infrastructure projects, just as the flood has come and surged upon us here in the state of Florida. He has done nothing about inflation, Florida, particularly Miami, the inflation capital of the United States.

He's done nothing about our record high insurance prices here. That is when you can get insurance because insurance companies are cutting and running and fleeing the state of Florida, the free state of Florida, mind you, where nothing is free, by the way. And of course, the skyrocketing cost of living. Rent is too damn high and

it is highest and growing exploding I should say faster here in Florida and particularly South Florida than anywhere else in the country but never fear because governor Ron DeSantis is here to help he came down to Fort Lauderdale last week and presented in $8 million check to a billionaire. Another move in support of the future Miami Freedom Park has been made. Before Thursday night's game, Governor Ron DeSantis awarded $8 million to Miami-Dade County solely for infrastructure around the stadium. Our role, I think, as the state government is not necessarily to give money to a team

or do this, but to just create an environment where everyone can be successful, and whether that's in education or other things, but infrastructure is a big part of that. Socialism for billionaires. What the hell? They wanted to get that money, Billy. From you and me, Roy. That's where they got that money. And he's talking about infrastructure. He means we have to pay to clean up their mess. Jorge Mas and David Beckham got a 99-year, no-bid, below-market value lease on the city of Miami's largest piece of contiguous real estate.

In fact, what was our largest green space or park in the city. Mind you, it was a golf course, but nonetheless, that's what it was. They get this deal not for a soccer stadium, but for a whole major duty development of which Jorge Mas has no experience. He's not a developer. He's never built a hotel or a shopping mall or an office complex or any of this retail crap. He's going to sublease it out to other people and in fact the city of Miami is going to be one of their first tenants because they're going to build new office buildings for the city on the property

and lease back our own land at what will no doubt be above market rates. The whole thing was a crazy heist from the very beginning. And yet here we are giving $8 million because they're gonna totally destroy. By the way, not only did Jorge Mas lie, lie, by the way, he's a liar and a sports welfare queen. He lied about that this was all gonna be privately financed, no public money, okay? But one step further, he hid a traffic impact study. He wouldn't release it

publicly. He kept saying, well, we did one but never released it and now we know they're going to obviously destroy the infrastructure around there. So why shouldn't he pay to clean up the mess he's making? No, the state is going to come in, the county is going to come in, the feds are going to come in to remediate this toxic landfill that he has there and... Oh, that's BS. No, totally, totally BS. Neil DeMoss is the author of one of my favorite books about the business of sports. It's called Field of Schemes, How the great stadium swindle turns public money

into private profit. He is the editor of fieldofschemes.com, an amazing blog that's updated almost daily. And you have to read it to believe it because sports welfare is real. And let me tell you right now, like when I hear about, oh, we have to stop the communist threat, there's no communist threat to the United States. The greatest threat to our way of life is crony capitalism. It gives power to the oligarchs, not to the people. It perverts the free market economy. If you call yourself a capitalist, it completely deteriorates any semblance of a meritocracy.

It destroys the American dream. And sports welfare is perhaps one of the greatest sins. And Neil, what is the economic impact? Like what do we know about the numbers of how much roughly public money has gone in to build, basically to subsidize millionaires and billionaires for their their private companies. Yeah I mean it's hard to get a good number because as we're seeing with with you know this deal right there's claims that it is entirely private money but there's the public land that's going into it there's the eight million dollar

oversized checks going into it now, but it's certainly probably two, $3 billion a year in terms of state money, city money, federal tax breaks, things like that, that end up going into these projects. And the return on that, I think if you ask any economist in the country who's investigated it, is pretty much zero, maybe a little more than zero, but pretty much zero. It is absolutely the worst bang for your buck

that you can find anywhere outside of, I don't know, the Pentagon buying $15,000 hammers or whatever it is these days. Well, we often hear about this, the ROI, like that these are investments in neighborhoods, in communities, in future revenue. And you see these economic impact studies that are commissioned by municipalities or states or cities

or usually by the franchises themselves, be it NFL, MLS in this case, certainly Major League Baseball, the NHL, NBA, and now in some cases, amateur or even minor league teams as well are getting major duty multimillion and billion dollar subsidies and all of these teams are usually again owned by People whose net worths are for example 12 billion dollars is the net worth estimated net worth of Shad Khan the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars

who just got himself thanks to the mayor of Jacksonville, Donna Deegan, a one point, what is the total now? They're saying 1.3-ish billion dollar stadium, 55% of which is going to come from the city's general fund. Again, to subsidize a billionaire and his private business. And Neil, they have a study, an economic impact study that the Jaguars commissioned and then the city commissioned to study to study that study, not even in their own study, just to study the study. that there will be $26 billion in economic impact

from this stadium investment. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, everybody has a study, right? I mean, some of the economists who look at this, tearing their hair out, JC Bradbury, I kind of saw a state, I think referred to them as clown studies, which is a good term.

I actually have a friend who used to work for a consultant that did these kinds of economic impact studies. And he always compared it to the old Calvin Hobbes cartoon where Calvin was writing a paper titled, Bats are Giant Bugs. And Hobbes is like, I'm not so sure about that. And Calvin says, no, don't worry. I'm gonna get an A.

I've got a secret weapon. I've got this clear plastic binder that I'm going to put it in. Teachers love that. And that's what these studies are, right? The numbers are complete garbage. They're about as relevant as bats or giant bugs, but they're glossy.

They've got lots of charts. They're full color. They've got these nice slide shows and presentations. And economists will all look at them and say, OK, this is complete garbage. This is not even a legitimate study. It's just a PR document. But unfortunately, a lot of people in the media buy into it, or at least will say, well, the official study says this, but then these other economists say that the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. And that's not the case. Anybody who's done any kind of independent studies has found that the benefit of these things

and the economic impact is very, very small. You're mostly just moving money around. How is moving, the Jaguars aren't even moving, right? They're just going from the same stadium to the same stadium, but upgraded. If Jaguars fans are spending more there, but are spending less, I don't know, eating dinner somewhere else in town because they're eating at the

stadium. Then how is that a net positive for the city? This does remind me of Calvin Hobbs. It reminds me of Calvin peeing on the taxpayers is what it is what it reminds me of. But it's a great point that you just made about, well, also economic impact is different from revenue or tax revenue or new, and you're absolutely right. Most of the money that's made is what they call, I think, diverted revenue or diverted income. Because when someone opens, for example,

starts a major league soccer franchise that didn't exist before, I don't suddenly have an MLS budget that just magically appears in my income stream or my bank account or my budget. It's just like, that's money that if I start spending it there, I'm not spending it someplace else. So it's not new revenue, it's just revenue

that's being made someplace else. And it's instead of going to say, I don't know, a local restaurant or a local business owner, you know, a hardworking Miamian or Floridian who is struggling to make ends meet and cover their expenses and make their nut. It's going to some billionaire that's getting subsidized by me and all those hardworking people, regardless of whether or not or

irregardless, as we say in Miami, anyone ever goes and you makes use of this particular stadium. I mean, Marlins Park being the perfect example. I mean, we spent billions of dollars and we to basically be in a race to the bottom with Tampa Bay for attendance, right? And now Tampa Bay is gonna spend a billion dollars or whatever on, I mean, it's just, and it never ends. Like just when we think we've hit rock bottom,

Mayor Deegan or the governor of New York comes up with a newer shittier deal, it seems. Yeah, I mean, economists call it the substitution effect, right, because you're substituting spending in one place for another. And my favorite example of this is still from back in the 1994 baseball strike, where some Canadian broadcasters went around

to local businesses in Toronto and said, how is it affecting you? You know, the Blue Jays not playing, and they went into this comedy club, and the guy there was like, it's great. We've never been so packed because people don't have baseball to watch. We wish hockey would go on strike too.

So, you know, it's not a secret here, but you're absolutely right that the numbers are just getting more and more and more when Kathy Hochul in New York approved a billion dollars for the Buffalo Bills two years ago now it was. You know, it was an insane amount of money. With no roof. No roof.

With no roof. And they, but since then, you know, a billion dollars is kind of the bottom line, right? You know, you've got the Bears and the White Sox talking about two billion dollars. You know, it's just the numbers just go up and up and up. And it's not because construction costs are getting higher, right? It's because, you know, if if you can get the money, you may as well ask for a two billion dollar stadium or a three billion or a four billion dollars stadium, right?

If you're not paying for it, then you might as well build whatever you can. Part of me doesn't blame these owners. Their job is to get the best. They have a fiduciary responsibility to their, you know, ownership group to get the best deal that they possibly can. And if you have all these politicians that are going to leave the the safe door wide open, someone's going to go in there and take that money. But you made a funny point earlier, Neil, about like, maybe it must be somewhere in the middle.

There's the people who say the economic impact is zero. There's people who say it's 26 billion. It must be somewhere in the middle. Let's look at this 26 billion dollars, this bullshit that the mayor of Jacksonville shoved down the taxpayers' throat, and like you said, a lot of the media, not all of it, eats it right out of their hands because let's face it, they're complicit because they want the ad money and they want the access to these sports teams. So it's all like you have sports welfare queens like Greg Cody.

You're goddamn right, Meatball. Who are complicit in all of this, but let me give you the facts. Somewhere quote unquote in the middle of zero and $26 billion. So of course, you know, the recent survey of over 130 academic studies shows that the direct economic benefits of stadiums

don't match the mammoth amount of public money used to build them. But according to the Journal of Sports Management, the estimated city revenue generated by the Jaguars from 1996 to 2007 was a mere $36.5 million over those two decades. So I don't know where they get off saying that over the 30 years of this new sports welfare deal, there will be 26 billion when there was only 36 and a half million over 20 years. Right. Well, you've hit on it before, right? You said

that it's the difference between economic impact and actual money, right? Economic impact is just somebody took money and handed it to somebody else in your city, which doesn't necessarily benefit the city or people in the city or any of that. What you want to care about is tax revenues, right? And if the city is spending this amount of money, is it actually going to get it back in a way that it will be able to then spend it on other community needs, right? The answer is no, almost never, you know? Not certainly if you're spending a billion dollars or even hundreds of millions of dollars

because there just isn't that amount of money that's gonna come in in terms of new taxes. It's just not possible. Before we go for the record, I invited to be on this program today some of the sports welfare queens from across the state of Florida, including Miami Mayor Francis Suarez,

who basically worked as a unregistered lobbyist who decided to bend over for Beckham and push this sports welfare scheme through in Miami. We have a standing invitation for him and for Miami Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who has been just shoveling cash over to Steven Ross as he shovels cash back to her through her political committee through so-called donations. I invited former City of Miami Commissioner Ken Russell.

He was the swing vote, the deciding vote on the Mel Reese, David Beckham, Jorge Mas scheme. He declined to come on. I invited Miami-Dade Commissioner Kevin Cabrera, who's a very proud boy, like literally a proud boy, to come on and he's the one who introduced this measure. He sponsored the measure for this welfare from the state that Ron DeSantis came down and presented in the form of a giant $8 million ceremonial check to a billionaire.

He refused to come on. And of course, Jacksonville mayor Donna Deegan. If this is so defensible, Neil, if these are such important projects that help the community, why don't they come on to defend it and answer real questions about it? You know, they don't have to, right? I mean, we're back to the journalism again

and the fact that, you know, politicians and billionaires and everyone has really become accustomed to the idea that the news is not going to have the time to investigate their claims, right? You know, everybody's out there has to write eight stories a day. You barely have time to copy and paste the press release. So, you know, if you can get away with not answering questions, of course you're going to not answer questions, which is why it's, you know, great when people do take the time like this show to actually sort of try to investigate it. And like I try and do on my website to try to say,

okay, at least I can in the time I have in the morning, when I'm writing up my blog, try and at least ask the questions for, how is this gonna benefit anybody? How is this gonna actually work out? What is the actual financing plan? Because all too seldom, all too often, that's not asked at all.

And how can you defend the indefensible, which is ultimately what I think the reason why they don't speak out about it beyond sports media press conferences who don't exactly who are exactly equipped to ask the best questions about this. Neil DeMoss, if you do want to get the real data and the real facts about how we are being swindled for billions with a B of dollars a year by billionaires. In sports welfare, go to fieldofschemes.com. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

I'm watching the Summer Games and I can tell you that with all the blood, sweat and tears that these athletes lose during competition, they need all the hydration that they can get. I also know that the weekend warriors like myself need to have the electrolytes that Liquid IV can provide. Where there is a day at the bar park or barbecuing staying hydrated is crucial especially in this heat. Liquid IV helps maintain optimal hydration levels allowing me to enjoy these events to the fullest without the discomfort of dehydration. After I exercise which for me is just mowing the lawn I just pop in a stick of strawberry liquid IV in a cold glass of water. It's perfect for coming in out of the sun. Cool

off your summer with the reimagined flavors of iconic treats like popsicle firecracker, or get a refreshing swallow goodness with zero sugar from the indulgent fruity flavors of rainbow sherbet. Tear, pour, live more. One stick plus 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. If hydrating were an Olympic sport, you would win the gold. Get 20% off your first order of Liquorid IV when you go to LiquoridIV.com and use code DLS at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code DLS at LiquoridIV.com. Summer months get crazy here, Roy. I mean, Miami just gets extra nuts. And it's been a while since we've done Wheel of Despair. And in the past couple of weeks, we've had the mayor of North Miami get hacked with all his personal photos, which shut down the city

for a while. We had Miami-Dade Mayor Danielle Levinkova approved a new bridge project to be built by the same company that built the FIU bridge that collapsed and killed six people. I mean, it's a wheel of despair, right? So what are our topics for today? Oh, hold on, let me dust this wheel off. Yeah, it's been a minute. Right then, all right.

Here we go, I got the... Oh, right here been a minute. Light that off. All right. Here we go. I got the... Oh, right here. Right there. There it is. There is our leaflet on famous Jewish sports legends. Yes. Some light reading.

Oh, Sandy Koufax over here. We got, Accused Sex Pest Mayor. Okay. S&M Attorney's Office. Yes, the S&M Attorney's Office. office sure. Yeah having a lot of fun over there another first amendment lawsuit another first amendment lawsuit Another first amendment lawsuit. Is that all caps another first amendment lawsuit. Okay Yeah, okay. You see the caps there?

Thank you. Um, uh, lifeless wallet. I think it's called life wallet, Roy. Oh, there's no life left in that wallet. We have biometric technology. Not a single ounce of cash in that wallet. And it looks like mine actually. Building bridges.

Building bridges, yeah. All right, here we go. (*clanking sound*) Another First Amendment lawsuits. In the last month Roy, appeals courts have allowed not one but two First Amendment lawsuits, federal suits, against the city of Miami to move forward. First up is the lawsuit from comedian Hannibal Burris, who was falsely arrested

in Wynwood a few years ago after a night of drinking, which is what one does at night in Wynwood. But you had this cop and this cop had actually been caught on video months before he arrested Hannibal in 2020, drunkenly attacking and choking a man for no reason after drinking Fireball Tito's Vodka and Sierra Mist cocktails at the Kendall Ale House with another cop, Adrian Santos, who was later caught on video allegedly snorting cocaine at the Eleven Strip Club and thrown out by bouncers.

It's like a Miami mad lib, this story, but good for Hannibal for standing up for his rights. And that case is moving forward. Also moving forward is a lawsuit filed by former Miami police chief Art Acevedo against the city and what he calls the three-headed monster of corrupt commissioners, Joe Corollo, Manolo Reyes, and Alex Diaz La Portilla, who's already been arrested

for bribery and money laundering, and city manager Art Noriega for wrongful termination and for, it's a whistleblower lawsuit, they violated his first amendment rights. So, I mean, the city of Miami is just like a third world Banana Republic dictatorship. In God we trust. That really wasn't the card I wanted to tip us.

Let's just move on. Okay. It's just his corolla. I mean, you had to play one of them. S&M Attorney's Office. All right, this is going to be a how it started, how it's going headline. The first headline is, women are sex objects in sadomasochistic novel by man hired to train Miami prosecutors.

So you might recall there's been a whole lot of controversy lately and scandal in the Miami State Attorney's Office, which we've covered quite extensively. But what they did was to help handle that, they hired a guy who is the author of a book called Death Penalty Desires, Passion, Lust, and Murder, which is an R-rated self-published novel in which she, quote, explores a woman's desire for submission as she stands accused of being the infamous sex toy killer." End quote. So, according to the Miami Herald, it is, quote, full of crude sexual violence, including descriptions of a transgender person as a man beast, a mutilated crotch, and it depicts

female characters as having an intrinsic need to submit to a masculine man. Prosecutors in the book are craven and corrupt, and one character is found murdered with a sex toy lodged in his anus and a horse tail is attached to it. I'm just, I'm glad I said all of those words, so when my future run for Senate, someone can just play that video clip. A horse tail, huh? That's where, that was your takeaway, Roy?

I mean, you know, like, that I'm just that's not a very good image That's not a very good image It's not Seabiscuit over here Madadios do we have time for one more? Lifeless wallet. Our friend, former Miami Hurricanes, NIL sugar daddy, John Ruiz, his company, Life Wallet, also known as MSP Recovery. I got bad news for you, Roy.

I don't know if you invested all your money in Life Wallet stock or in Miami Coin. Either way, you are ski rude. According to a filing earlier this month with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has concluded there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. Unless we are successful in raising additional funds, we may not be able to continue to operate as a going concern beyond the next 12 months. The company reported that in the first three months

of 2024, they made $6 million in revenue and reported losing $176 million in revenue. Now, I was never good at that there book learning, Roy, and I didn't realize it was gonna be math on today's program But that is a difference of a hundred and seventy million dollars So I guess we're not gonna get that stadium in hurricane stadium in Tropical Park in Shalala's Enchanted Forest over there

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