DCF Worker Accused In Prostitution Ring Returns To MIA To Face Charges

MIAMI (CBS4) – An investigator with the Department of Child and Families accused of sexual misconduct with a foster child returned to Miami after being arrested in New York.
Jean LaCroix, 46, landed at Miami International Airport just after 5 p.m. Thursday.

LaCroix 46, was reportedly in New York trying to flee to the Dominican Republic before he was turned around and returned to the U.S., according to CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald.
“ASAs (Assistant State Attorneys) Brenda Mezick & Court Keeley, MDPD Det. Jeanette Azcuy & ICE ASAC Tonya Marshall went to extraordinary lengths to bring this man into custody as he tried to flee the country,” said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in a statement released earlier this month.  “But for those who work child exploitation & human trafficking cases, extraordinary efforts are just part of the everyday routine.”

Investigators learned LaCroix caught a flight out to the Dominican Republic on June 30. They then contact customs agents in the Dominican Republic to refuse LaCroix entry. They did, and LaCroix was immediately returned to New York, where he was taken into custody.
Prosecutors believe LaCroix ultimately was headed for Haiti, where he grew up, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
Four men accused of running the ring were arrested in June. CBS4 obtained a copy of a search warrant issued for Lacroix’s work-issued cell phone. The warrant allows police officers to access Lacroix’s call history, text messages and any other communication he may have had with the alleged victim using that phone.
The warrant was issued in May. It indicates a 17-year-old girl in foster care admitted to Miami-Dade Police that she engaged in consensual sexual intercourse on numerous occasions with her DCF case worker, Jean Lacroix.
It further stated the alleged victim said she called and sent text messages to Lacroix and that he would arrange to pick her up from school, take her to his residence, where they allegedly had consensual sex.
“He was an excellent man, an excellent man,” said Lacroix’s friend Jean Clayvil. “I don’t believe it.”
Clayvil says he tried calling Lacroix on his DCF cell phone a couple of weeks ago, but wasn’t able to speak with him until he saw him at their church.

“I said ‘I called you’, and he told me he doesn’t have this phone number no more. He told me the company doesn’t want him to use the phone anymore.” Clayvil said Lacroix didn’t offer an explanation as to why.
According to the search warrant, Lacroix’s case work involving the alleged victim began in September of 2011 and ended in October, but indicated the two stayed in touch on his personal cell phone after he was instructed not to by his supervisor.
Lacroix was placed on administrative leave in May. DCF Secretary David E. Wilkins has since released this statement:

I will do nothing as always

This alleged behavior is absolutely appalling and betrays the trust and confidence that all Floridians have in our Department’s employees. Mr. Lacroix’s actions in no way reflect the expectations we and all Floridians have for our investigators or any of our employees.
LaCroix has been charged with five counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor.
CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed to this report.

cbs4price | July 12, 2012 at 6:44 pm |

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/07/12/dcf-worker-accused-in-sexual-misconduct-returns-to-mia-to-face-charges/

Investigators Turn Up More Conflict of Interest at Florida AG Bondi’s Office

In New York we see elites attacking the Attorney General for doing his job. In Florida, however, there’s a different dynamic going on.


June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards,



I’ve written about June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards, the two foreclosure fraud investigators at the state Attorney General’s office fired for being too competent in their investigations. This appeared to be a US Attorney-like scandal at the state level, but I wasn’t hopeful that much would come of it. Boy, was I wrong. The news media in Florida picked up on this and wouldn’t let go. Set against a backdrop of a foreclosure crisis, firing the people closest to getting at the corruption and fraud resonated sharply against the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and her staff. Bondi, after making nods toward defending the decision, then initiated an outside investigation into the firing. And that still wasn’t enough to satiate the press. This is a devastating article from the Orlando Sentinel a couple days ago:



Attorney General Pam Bondi


Eight months after she took office as a first-time elected official, Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing a management crisis replete with allegations of old-fashioned political interference in cases and a revolving door between lawyers and the companies they investigate.
An outside investigator is looking into the circumstances surrounding the May firings of foreclosure fraud investigators June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards. This week, another investigator abruptly resigned after giving the media a 16-page memo noting that two other high-profile lawyers in the attorney general’s office had taken jobs with companies under investigation, and accusing top management of interfering in an investigation of a prominent Tampa car dealership [...]
The latest blast came from Andrew Spark, who resigned from Bondi’s Tampa economic crimes office and said in a 16-page, memo that he was speaking out because the public deserved “fair and honest government, independent of personal connections and powerful interests.”



Bill McCollum

 He complained that two top lawyers, former assistant attorney general Joe Jacquot and former Economic Crimes Division Director Mary Leontakianakos, had both taken jobs with foreclosure companies under state investigation, Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services and the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson in Fort Lauderdale. Both had worked for Bondi’s predecessor, Bill McCollum, who lost a primary bid for governor last fall.
Jacquot said Friday he had avoided any involvement in the investigation into LPS months before taking a job with the company, and is legally banned from representing the company before his old office. Leontakianakos, a 25-year veteran of four administrations, was hired this summer by the Watson law firm two months after it reached a $2 million settlement with the AG’s office. She said Friday she cleared the job with the state Ethics Commission and made certain the investigation into the Watson firm was closed before she interviewed for the job.

So not only were Clarkson and Edwards fired for, among other things, pursuing investigations against LPS, but other lawyers at the AGs office were JOINING LPS after they settled with the state.
Some of Bondi’s other troubles concern an adverse judicial ruling that really undercuts her consumer protection responsibilities. And that’s just garden-variety ideology trumping the law. But even in that case, Bondi’s office declined to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court, apparently preferring to tie their own hands.
The pressure is on Pam Bondi. I didn’t think that, in this environment, she would go the way of Alberto Gonzales. But with an independent investigation sure to produce more revelations, it’s certainly possible.

UPDATE: The Sentinel article made it sound like Bondi’s office settled with LPS, but their only settlement as it relates to foreclosure fraud was a $2 million deal with the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, a foreclosure mill law firm.

By: David Dayen Monday August 15, 2011 6:55 am

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/08/15/investigators-turn-up-more-conflict-of-interest-at-florida-ag-bondis-office/

The Florida Way, Corruption

May 8, 2011

When people think about political corruption they think of places like Chicago and New York but the number one state for corruption in America is Florida.  Florida has had more public officials found guilty of corruption than any other state in the last decade, a staggering 824 politicians. These are just the ones who got caught.
But the savvy politician does not have to break the law. They can simply set up a consulting company and circumvent every campaign law. It has become the Florida Way.


State Senator Mike Fasano



Consulting fees are nothing more than buying access to elected officials and obtaining political favors. Why do lawyers, engineers, and doctors give up their careers to make $30,000 a year as a legislator in Tallahassee? We hope this is a public service but for many they make more money as politicians than in the private sector.





Florida

 Let’s say you are a certain transportation company seeking legislation that will help your bottom line. Campaign laws limit the amount of money you can give to a political campaign, but in Florida you can hire elected officials as “consultants” and pay them whatever you want. There are numerous examples of powerful elected officials being paid tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees or to perform marketing studies despite the fact they never performed those services before they held elected office.



The average taxpayer does not have a fighting chance when powerful special interests throw millions of dollars at elected officials. If an elected official has a choice between feeding their family or serving the taxpayer they will chose their family every time.
State Senator Mike Fasano proposed an ethics reform bill this year. The problem is Fasano accepted a job with a powerful company just weeks after approving Sun Rail that helped his new employer. Ethics reform should prevent elected officials from taking consulting fees or jobs from companies that do business with the State of Florida.

We currently have elected officials employed in “government affairs” with companies who benefit from their work. If an elected official has a job with a company that does business with the State of Florida, that representative should be barred from voting on legislation that affects their company. These public servants are not serving the public at all. They put themselves in a position of power to help their employers.
Corruption is no longer cash in a brown paper bag. The corruption now comes in the form of consulting fees and jobs that influence public policy to the benefit of special interests. Florida desperately needs a major ethics reform law that bars elected officials from putting the interests of special interests above the citizens of Florida.

http://www.floridapoliticalpress.com/2011/05/08/the-florida-way-corruption/

Illinois Is Trying. It Really Is. But the Most Corrupt State Is Actually . . .

Where is officialdom most crooked? Last week, many guessed it must be Illinois, after news that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taped making brazen personal demands in exchange for his selection of a Senate successor to President-elect Barack Obama.

The state's image took a hit despite its long history of producing famously principled political figures, from the bowtied Senator Paul Simon to the great man on the penny.

But bloggers from competing hotbeds of wrongdoing proclaimed that theirs were the worst officials in the land, thank you. New Jerseyans seemed especially sure that their leadership came out on top in the race to the bottom.
Not so. And not so for Illinois, either.

There are several ways to gauge levels of government corruption, all of them a bit, well, corrupt. We present three methods here in the interest of keeping the arguments going.
Number of Guilty Officials (Graphic)
In a Department of Justice tally covering the last decade, Florida wins by its sheer number of guilty. The report, released last week, itemizes convictions in federal public corruption cases at local, state and federal levels in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and three United States territories.
Illinois ranks only seventh, with 502 convictions. At the squeaky-clean end of the scale, Nebraska barely managed an average of about one guilty official per year.
But the bigger the state, generally, the more officials it has, criminal or otherwise. So places like Florida, New York and Texas pile up big numbers. Let's adjust the data for population.


Senator Paul Simon



The Guilty, per Capita (Graphic) A better measure, perhaps, showing how many convicted officials are produced for every one million constituents. Seems fair - unless you're North Dakota.
The District of Columbia wins big, for obvious reasons: its high concentration of public officials amid a relatively small population. Also, the local United States attorney's office focuses on rooting out corruption, adding to conviction rates.
USA Today published a similar list last week, declaring North Dakota the most corrupt state. Statewide outrage followed. (The newspaper omitted the District and the United States territories.) Mike Jacobs, the editor and publisher of the Grand Forks Herald, called it "a stunning and incomprehensible result" and could recall few cases of public misdeeds over his four decades in North Dakota journalism. (One that sprang into his mind: the head of a state office who was accused of shoplifting peanuts in a grocery store. The charges were dropped. That was in 1981.)
So what's going on out on the Prairie? Two large cases of embezzlement by local officials ran up the conviction numbers, plus a smattering of mostly small-bore crime. Selling a Senate seat? Not yet.
Meanwhile, Nebraska continues to shine as a beacon of good government.
A Survey of Journalists (Graphic)

Researchers asked state house reporters to assess their subjects and ranked responses on a scale of 1 (clean) to 7 (crooked) in a 2003 study. Nebraska? Good, not great. For North Dakota, sweet vindication: it tied with South Dakota and Colorado for least corrupt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/weekinreview/14marsh.html