$6,000 permit was pulled on phony plans for imaginary bath/kitchen demo before $1,000,000 build-out proceeded

GETTINGAHEADOFTHEJOBCONATSUNSETHARBOUR
20 July 2012 Special to the SunPost By David Arthur Walters The South Florida real estate recovery has been a boon for Miamis Sharron Lewis Design Central, headed by Jihad Doujeiji, who succeeded his wife, Sharron Lewis, when she passed away in March 2011 after a long bout with terminal cancer, but he is encountering some difficulty with licensing and permitting along the way. Sharron ran the interior design and furniture manufacturing divisions for the firm. Jihad took care of the construction end but he had no license; therefore Sharron studied, passed the exam, and obtained a general contracting license for him to work under. He did not alert the licensing authorities when she died, and was soon cited for operating without a license, for which he received just a traffic ticket. Still, he was worried enough to get himself a trusted expeditor, who in turn, besides fiddling with plans and getting them approved, induced licensed contractors to put their license numbers on permit applications to make the paper look good. He still did all the bidding, the contracting, the billing and disbursement of funds. He ran the jobs and his own crew did most of the work, sometimes using licensed subcontractors for electrical and plumbing. He was well known as competent general contractor, so who cared if he had no license as long as licensed contractors signed the permit applications under penalties of perjury? Jihad scratched the contractor information off his business card and went ahead with contracting, bidding and landing millions in contracts. He called himself a construction manager. We asked the state licensing board if someone could just call himself a construction manager and not

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have to obtain a license. No dice. We were referred to an official understatement rendered to another inquirer: a construction manager is a general contractor. According to Tony Gonzalez, operations manager of the City of Miami Beach Building Department, unlicensed contractors are occasionally tagged by inspectors for running jobs on a borrowed license, i.e. piggybacking. The licensed contractor on record, who has been watching television or out boating, is called in, and does not seem to know anything about the job. However, said Mr. Gonzalez, that kind of case is hard to prove so seldom prosecuted. It is the form and not the substance of the thing that counts, at least until buildings start falling down. Jihad may eventually learn the formalities of how to best play the game; say, get a licensed contractor, as a partner, to put his license in one of his companies, sign documents, perhaps go over the plans, maybe show up on the jobs once in awhile, and otherwise avoid the appearance of impropriety, for a commission on gross revenue and small share of the profits. Never mind the licensing. Jihad is involuntarily raising otherwise lazy eyebrows due to the SunPosts expos of something every contractor does, so much so that wrong seems right because wrong has been done so long. Indeed, it has allegedly become so customary that it seems perfectly legal, at least until one is caught doing it, and then the penalty is just a traffic ticket, amounting to having to pay double permit fees plus a small penalty for attempting to deprive government of the permit fees it is entitled to, by stealing a march on the regulators, gaining a secret advantage over them, thus leaving the government in the lurch and the unwitting majority holding an empty bag. If permit fees evaded were taxes, the evasion would be felonious. But construction seems to have its own world governed by a masonic conspiracy set on overthrowing the foundations of any government it cannot control. Deceiving the government out of permit fees would seemingly be covered by laws prohibiting attempts to defraud or actual grand larceny; but law enforcement apparently cannot sell it as a crime to prosecutors, who cannot sell it to judges, although the Man on the Street would think it is deserving of a trial, especially if he knew how much money is pocketed by the unindicted conspirators every year. Contractors call it getting ahead of the job. We have accordingly titled our expose Getting Ahead of The Job Con, beginning with Getting Ahead of The Job Con at the Icon, and Getting Ahead of The Job Con at the Continuum, and now this, Getting Ahead of The Job Con at Sunset Harbour. The irony of the Icon project is that the fabulous remodeling job done in unit 1801, after it was wrecked by foreclosure victims, was not permitted by the City of Miami Beach at all, according to a city records clerk, yet Sharron Lewis Design Central features a photograph of the living room redone there on its home page. The Icon contract was completed for Gerald Jonas, a seasoned Wisconsin general contractor in town speculating on real estate on behalf of his companys profit sharing plan, which is allegedly brimming over with accumulated earnings. Mr. Jonas certainly had a winning team for the Icon deal: namely, his real estate agent, Bragi
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Sigurdsson, contractor Jihad Doujeiji, lead interior designer and marketing maven Elizabeth Calomiris and her design consultants, Jorge Hernandez and John Wheeler, at Sharron Lewis Design Central. Mr. Jonas flipped the Icon apartment six months after he bought it, netting an estimated $1,263,000 after commissions and staging costs of $167,000. Mr. Jonas, more than satisfied with his teams results at the Icon, contracted with Jihad at Sharron Lewis Design Central to build out the empty and bare 6,650 sq. ft. condominium/penthouse TS3 at Sunset Harbour, agreeing with Jihad to nearly $1,000,000 in construction costs plus furnishings valued at around half that. A source within the building said the unit is cursed. One Felix Mostelac bought it for $6,500,000 in 2007. Chase Bank foreclosed and sold it to K. Ramkissoon LLC for $1,700,000 in January of this year. Ramkissoon sold it to Jonas Builders Profit Sharing Plan in February for $2,350,000, at which time Mr. Sigurdsson had it listed for $3,900,000. The value added by the staging of the apartment and the improving market for high end apartments may reap an even higher price of, say, $5,000,000. Plans had been drawn in 2007 and a permit applied for remodeling at a stated value of $200,000. That permit, without the benefit of an expeditor trusted by plan approvers, was approved eight long months later, in March 2008; however, no construction done; the permit was closed in June 2008. On March 21, 2012, Gerald Jonas, a seasoned Wisconsin contractor and investor, signed a blank permit application under penalties of perjury, as owner and ownerbuilder. The application form expressly prohibited, in bold capital letters, an owner from signing the form in the owner-builder section unless s/he is actually an owner builder. After the permit had been approved on the basis of the application, and after we stated that it was impossible for the permitted job to be an owner-builder project given the circumstances, a Building Department official crossed out the owner-builder attestation. We opined that the alteration of the completed and approved application constituted a tampering with evidence, and said that the entire process had been inappropriate. Rhonda Montoya Hasan, an attorney in the City Attorneys office who had reviewed the application for approval, stated that our portrayals were misrepresentations, including our opinion that the standard procedure of signing documents in blank under penalties of perjury, to be filled in later as needed, was inappropriate. In this case, the blanks were filled in with the names of contractors and the nature, scope, and value of the work, misrepresentations that in our opinion were neither innocent nor negligent but were fraudulent. Contractors do not have to be listed on a permit application at the time of the initial submittal for plan review, she stated on May 16. A to be assigned would be noted and a contractor when required would necessarily have to be assigned before the permit is issued. In this case, there is a contractor in place; the plans were reviewed and approved for the kitchen and bathroom demolition, which is the scope of the applicable permit.

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The fact that the permit was issued for the destruction of a nonexistent kitchen and bathroom was not a misrepresentation but a fact supported by photographic evidence. We also pointed out that the permit erroneously bore the name of a previous owner, Felix Mostelac, a fact that had caused considerable confusion on the part of several people because the county record had Jonas Builders as owner at the time, and his name was obviously on the application for the permit. She falsely blamed the error, which was allowed to persist for some time after we pointed it out, on a tardy updating of the county appraisers records instead of admitting to the mistake, the detection of which was apparently another misrepresentation in her mind. In response to Ms. Montoya, we asserted that her denials were a constructive admission that mistakes had been made in accordance with bad policy, particularly in the handling and review of documents critical to the revenues of the city and safety of the public. She did not respond. However that may be, the blank application was signed by Gerald Jonas on March 21. Enter plan and permit fixer Orestes Rusty Innocenti aka Rusty At The Copy Shop. We believe his initial fee including hard cash for out-of-pocket expenses was around $22,000; that number probably increased when things went awry and more consulting fees, plus cash from the Money Truck for special expenses, were needed. Jason Sipes, a licensed general contractor dba Allstate General Contracting, was induced to sign the application under penalties of perjury on March 27Mr. Sipes hung up the phone on our reporter, who called him to ask routine survey questions about the million-dollar Sunset Harbour contract. Rusty allegedly had a familiar architect approve a doctoring of the old 2007 plans, which had not come to fruition, apparently to show the demolition of a kitchen/bathroom that had never been built. The facts affirmed by the signatories to the application were that a Kitchen Bathroom Demo would be done in a 500 sq. ft. area at a stated value of $6,000. The application was filed on April 6 and approved on April 20, such being the amazing speed of expeditor Rusty in getting plans and permits approved. Rusty is especially valued for having available an architect who will sign without much ado onto plans drawn by permit seekers or their draftsmen. Again, it is form over substance: everything is permitted as long as the paper looks good. Expeditors, by the way, are unlicensed by the contractors licensing board. They do not have to put their names to the jobs they expedite. Former City Manager Jorge Gonzalez said he protested against the expedition business, but he said his objections were dismissed by vested interests. A public records request turned up no jobs permitted over the past five years for Permit Doctors, the major expeditor, but Rusty had made the mistake of putting his name down, as a contact, eight times. In fact, the intent was to complete the $1,000,000 Sunset Harbour contract as quickly as possible, and that is what Jihad, driven by cash flow, was bound to do come hell or high water. After our repeated urging, based on a public photograph showing the space was completely empty before the permit was pulled, and therefore having no bathroom and kitchen to demolish, an inspector
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managed to get into the building, on May 29. Building Department Director Stephen Scott acknowledged that there was some difficulty in gaining access. Several calls to the building manager, to confirm an allegation that he had been taken care of at the outset of construction, which is a customary practice in some quarters, were not returned. Stop Work Order BV12000621 was issued on May 29 based on the obvious fact that the work done had nothing whatsoever to do with the work permitted: Work done without approved permit. Permit BD120153 was obtained for kitchen and bathroom demo. Total interior demolition took place (emphasis added), plus construction work as of new partitions, new electrical, new plumbing, new A/C. Need to stop all work. Need to submit the required documents to obtained approved permit and inspection. Permit BD120153 has been revoked. Double fees apply. There was no total interior demolition. The inspector was apparently unaware of the fact that the space was empty when the permit was pulled. A surveillance photo taken when the job was shut down indicates that perhaps $200,000 to $300,000 retail value of anti-demolition work had all ready been done before the inspector caught up with what is known in the industry as Getting Ahead of The Job. Mr. Doujeiji, Mr. Jonas and his Florida attorney failed to respond to requests for information, which must have forewarned them of our investigation. In any event, Mssrs. Doujeiji and Innocenti, alerted to our persistent inquiries to top city officials, were prepared for the May 29 shutdown. Sharron Lewis Design Central staff allegedly drafted plans in accord with the real intention of the owner. The official plans, dated May 28, numbered B1203805, are Drawn by Rusty for the Job called Jihad. Trusty Rusty or Speedy Rusty, as he is sometimes called, had all ready, by May 31, gotten the zoning, electrical, and structural components of the plans approved for permitting. The alacrity of expeditors is rather amazing when compared to the lengthy time it takes owners and developers to pull permits without their services, even with the same documentation. Rusty got Harald Bergen dba Construction Design Group International Inc., allegedly his main client, to sign new work permit application B1203805 on May 27, filed on May 29 for a stated value of $400,000 in interior remodeling of 6,000 sq. ft., including new electrical, plumbing, and mechanical work. Mr. Bergens signature on the application was notarized by Rusty. The application appears to be a duplicate of the one originally signed in blank by Gerald Jonas as owner-builder way back in March, with the blanks filled in this time with a different scope and value of work, and with Mr. Bergens information. Mr. Bergen provided his business (C.D.G.I) address on the new permit application as an 841 sq. ft. private residence at 8001 Crespi Blvd 4-D, Miami Beach, Florida 33141; however, the city, prone to making and reiterating mistakes, erroneously gives the city as Milwaukee, Wisconsin on its May 29 Receipt of Payment. 8001 Crespi Blvd. 4-D was deeded by Mr. Bergen and his wife to a single woman in 2005. The company address that Mr. Bergen registered with the contractors licensing board is 1521 Alton Road Suite 646, a drop box in a UPS store.
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In a July 5 letter to Building Department Director Scott, we stated that application B1230805 of 29 May 2012 appears to be invalid as to form and should be rejected out of hand. A proper application unstained by past misconduct should be submitted. We said we had good cause to be suspicious of any forms used by Jihad Doujeiji, such as Photo Shopped certificates of insurance provided to owners, for contracting purposes, and to building managers, to gain access to buildings. We suggested that the Building Department be overly cautious when reexamining the two applications, which appeared to be identical in some respects; to make sure, for example, that the signatures are actually in the original and not forged, comparing especially carefully the signatures of the notary, and examining her book to see if two forms were actually notarized. Not that there were not two forms, with one to be held in abeyance just in caseseveral blank checks can come in handy as everyone who is gaming the system knows. Regarding old permit BD120153, which in our opinion was fraudulently obtained, we opined to Mr. Scott that it would seem to a reasonable layperson that anyone who swears or affirms to whatever might be inserted in a document later on should be held accountable for whatever appears on it later on. If false information were subsequently provided, the owners who signed permits in blank would have committed perjury. And contractors who knowingly affirm falsehoods would arguably have perjured themselves. City officials at this deadline have not responded to our suggestion that the new application be voided and an untainted one obtained. Neither has Director Scott responded to our June 11 request, asking him what he or his colleagues have done now that they have incontrovertible evidence that the City of Miami Beach had been fooled, and proof the mastermind of the deception was unlicensed contractor. And, we asked, What are you and/or your colleagues doing to radically reform the system so this sort of misconduct is unlikely to pass muster in the future? To the best of our knowledge, based on allegations that Mssrs. Doujeiji and Innocenti have visited the site to plan the work, and that the new general contractor has had little or nothing to do with the job as of yet, approval of the new permit is expected forthwith, upon the payment of a whopping fee. The fee for the fraudulently obtained and then rescinded permit BD120153 was $947.98. The fee on the new, May 29 permit application BD1203805 was initially stated at $24,351.93. On June 17, we were informed by someone who does some expediting himself that the Building Department opposed assessing double-permit fee penalties for getting ahead of the job and were inclined to waive them. We troubled Mr. Scott about our sources statement regarding the waiver of penalties, to which he responded that our source was incorrect. The pertinent fees were then virtually doubled: the July 6 Receipt of Payment shows a total fee of $46,945.80, for an additional fee of $22,593.78. If the contractor had completed the project on the basis of the demolition permit and gone undetected, the owner would have saved nearly $46,000 altogether. No one knows for certain how many millions of dollars has been lost by the city on other
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construction projects due to negligence, fraud, and public corruption over the last few years. Our guess is at least $50,000,000. ##

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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Getting Ahead of the Job Con at the Special Masters Court

August 15, 2012 By David Arthur Walters THE MIAMI MIRROR Our investigation into the public records of renegade contractor Jihad Doujeiji dba Sharron Lewis Design Central et al in conjunction with our series Getting Ahead of The Job Con led us to an old code violation citation that was disposed of by Special Master Babak Movahedi on August 11, 2011. The special magistrate denied a request to mitigate a fine of nearly $30,000. However, First Assistant City Attorney Steven Rothstein dismissed all but $2,520 of the fine and released the lien on the property at 50 South Pointe Drive Suite 801, stating that the original notice of the violation was defective. We questioned the City Attorneys Office, whose relationship with the current Special Masters has become controversial of late, about the dismissal. Mr. Doujeiji had been caught demolishing the luxury condominium at the Continuum without a permit, so a Stop Work Order and Notice of Violation were noticed to one Ricardo D. Borkowski
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

at that address on September 14, 2009. However, Mr. Borkowski had sold the unit on August 19 to Margret Asgeirsdottir, and the deed was recorded on August 25. Mr. Doujeiji had induced Ms. Asgeirsdottir to sign a Notice of Commencement in blank. He filled in the blanks himself, indicating that both she and Ricardo D. Borkowski owned the unit, and then he had his significant other, Sharron Lewis, whose general contractors license he worked under, notarize the document on September 9, five days before the Notice of Violation was issued and fifteen days after the property was conveyed to Ms. Asgeirsdottir. Mr. Doujeiji is accustomed to having owners sign blank documents even under penalties of perjury. Affiants may be held responsible for the content of affidavits they sign in blank, as if the person filling in the blanks were their agent. We do believe Mr. Doujeiji was acting as agent for the owner, and of course he had full knowledge of the notice of violation and later notices of hearings, some of which were mailed to the owner at his business address. We speculated that any notices appertaining to Ms. Asgeirsdottir served on him could be construed as service on her. And since a document signed by her indicated Mr. Borkowski as a co-owner, service on him could be construed as service on her. We are uncertain of the date Ms. Asgeirsdottir signed documents, if she did in fact sign them, and, if she did, whether she had appeared before the notary in person. Flooring permit application B1001203 was also ostensibly signed on September 9, 2009, by Ms. Asgeirsdottir, her signature again notarized by Ms. Lewis, and the blanks were filled in by Mr. Doujeiji, but this time he did not put Mr. Borkowskis name on the document as co-owner. The permit application itself was not filed until February 29, to be approved March 23, 2010. Incidentally, an assistant city attorney has informed us that signing a blank permit application under penalties of perjury to be filled in later as needed is a perfectly proper procedure. In any event, the inspector found the interior walls and ceilings of the Continuum apartment being demolished without a permit. The violation continued hence a complaint was filed in the code enforcement court, where a Special Masters hearing was scheduled February 4, 2010, and a notice thereof was sent to Mr. Borkowski at the property address. On January 26, Mr. Borkowski notified the court that he did not even own the property for it had been sold to Ms. Asgeirsdottir prior to the date the violation was noticed. On January 13, 2010, Cynthia Neves, clerk of the special magistrate court, had already detected the error and directed that the notice of the hearing be resent to the same address but with Ms. Asgeirdottirs name on it. Envelopes with notices were returned thereafter unclaimed, addressee unknown, one marked Not (here) 1-1510. This would be the case for later notices as well. We saw no evidence in the file such as an affidavit that constructive notice was given as per the Miami Beach Code: If both certified and first class mailings are returned, then constructive notice can be given by publication by posting the notice on the property and at City Hall, proof of that notice being provided by affidavit. She did not appear at the February 4 hearing, where the Special Magistrate Joe Kaplan ordered a fine of $150 per day, to run from March 29 until reaching $25,000. The magistrates order was filed in the circuit court on May 17 at which time it became a lien on the property. The fine mounted to $25,000 plus costs.

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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Mr. Doujeiji eventually completed the demolition, flooring and renovation of the fabulous apartment, which comprised three units conjoined, at a total stated value of $123,100, paying permit fees of $11,437. Given his modus operandi, i.e. getting ahead of the job like everybody does, without paying full permit fees if he can get away with it, and given the luxurious nature of the unit, we estimated the real value of the construction to be several times that, with unpaid permit fees of $30,000 or more. More recently, in 2011, he got a flooring contractor to pull a permit for Continuum 2602, laid down the floor and proceeded to with a full a non-permitted build-out of the unit. He completed a build-out in Suite 1801 at the Icon without pulling a permit at all. In 2012, his expeditor Orestes Rusty Innocenti helped him get a contractor to pull a permit at Sunset Harbour TS3, but for a completely empty space, for the demolition of an imaginary bathroom and kitchen; Mr. Doujeijis crew managed to complete nearly $500,000 of new construction there before he was caught red handed. Lately, he has allegedly been renovating an office/apartment building in downtown Miami without permits and a general contractors license, right under the noses of city and county inspectors. There are no doubt other unpermitted jobs completed by Mr. Doujeiji that we are unaware of. We single his jobs out merely as an example of what seems to be a general practice due to a lax and perhaps corrupt regulatory milieu. That is, what he does is what almost everybody does at one time or another. We have been asked to investigate instances of unpermitted construction and fine write-offs that would make his infractions a drop in the bucket. Ms. Asgeirsdottir and her husband Skuli Mogensen allegedly discovered the lien on her property when they proceeded to sell it in April 2011. Mr. Doujeiji, whose companion Sharron Lewis had passed away in March that year, was informed that the amount of the fine would be deducted from his bill; therefore, he had better get rid of the lien if he wanted to be paid. On April 10, 2011, a request to mediate the fine was sent to the code enforcement court on Sharron Lewiss personal letterhead. The letter was ostensibly signed by Ms. Asgeirsdottir, the signature appearing radically different than her supposed signature on previous documents. That letter was construed as request for mitigation and was honored, notwithstanding Miami Beach Code of Ordinances 30-76, that any such letter be executed under oath. According to a recording of the event which we retrieved, Mr. Doujeiji and an unnamed person representing Ms. Asgeirsdottir appeared August 11, 2011, before Babak Movahedi, the magistrate sitting in the case, and asked him to mitigate the nearly $30,000 fine, including expenses, basically because it was not fair. The owners representative stated that the owner lived out of the country hence did not receive mail appertaining to the case, that she had no idea there was a fine on the property, and had only become aware of it a few weeks past. Mr. Doujeiji said he began construction without a permit, thinking he could get the permits right away. He thought there should be no fine since he pulled the permit about 30 days after the citation, and he was appearing in hopes that the judge would help him. Besides, only some drywall was removed as part of the demolition. The judge did not buy the purportedly specious arguments. He said he was not presiding to help anyone but to find the facts and apply the law. He looked at the photographs and noted that far more than a little demolition had occurredin fact, the apartment was devastated. He said the owner had the responsibility to know what is going on with her property. Ignorance is no excuse, he said, and getting mail about the property is the owners problem. If the contractor started the job without the owners consent, then that would be a civil
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

matter between the owner and the contractor, and the owner can sue the contractor, but that has nothing to do with responsibility for the fine. In any event, he said, the date a permit is approved does not matter: a fine runs until the work that cures the violation is finished, and so it ran. Since the owners representatives offered no legal grounds for mitigation, or good reasons why the fine was unfair or inequitable, mitigation was denied. We note that a formal motion to quash the order for the fine and waive the lien on grounds of defective notice pursuant to the pertinent Florida statutes and local ordinance was not made at the hearing by the persons appearing for Ms. Asgeirsdottir. We do not know if the Special Master would have granted mitigation or dismissal if that formal argument were made. Harold Rosen, an attorney, was finally engaged Mr. Doujeiji or Ms. Asgeirsdottir to represent her. He filed a copy of a notice of appeal to the circuit court with the special master on August 29, 2011. City Attorney Jose Smith referred us to a circuit court case, but we found no appeal actually filed with and disposed of by the circuit court itself. Indeed, we found nothing after that in Special Master File BV09001224 except an order from First Assistant City Attorney Steven Rothstein to dismiss the case, along with copies of two checks totaling $2,520, identified as a Finance Dept. Agreement, Defective Notice Per Finance, T C. Attorney (sic). We could not say upon what authority the City Attorney could dismiss a case decided by the code enforcement court short of appealing it to the circuit court as provided by state law and local ordinance. But a city attorney would not appeal against the citys interest, to dismiss a case decided in its favor. If there were a settlement agreement contrary to the findings of fact and rulings of law by the special magistrate, we believed the settlement should have been documented with a thorough explanation and the case dismissed by the circuit court. In the alternative, perhaps the city attorney could have applied to the special magistrate for a rehearing of the matter. The original notice was defective, City Attorney Jose Smith said when we questioned him on the matter, describing the matter as a routine code violation case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and service or process. He kindly gave the explanation that was not on file: The city issued the violation to a person who no longer owned the unit. The city did not issue the violation against the actual violator who did the unpermitted work. The city improperly tried to join the violator in the case without proper service. An appeal to the circuit court was filed. Mr. Rothstein did the only ethical, legal thing he could do, to wit: dismiss the case. The subsequent owner paid a $2,500.00 fine after the work was legalized. At first glance, Mr. Smiths reasoning appeared to be sound; that is, if the original notice served on the former owner were controlling and the subsequent notices to the correct owner were irrelevant. But there was no written record of that disposition so we remained somewhat skeptical. Even if the notice were fatally defective, as we thought to be the case after reading the state statute and city code in respect to service of process, we still wondered, by what authority could an assistant city attorney or the City Attorney himself dismiss a special masters case when the only statutory venue for appeal seemed to be the circuit court? And of course he would not appeal versus the city that he represents. Why could we find no record of the circuit court case? Why is not that record in the file? Perhaps he and the defendants attorney struck a deal before a petition was filed with the circuit court clerk, so no dismissal upon settlement was filed
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there either. If that shortcut were taken, why did he not just say so in the first place? And if that kind of shortcut were routine, would it not arouse reasonable suspicion of unwarranted dealings behind the scenes? If this sort of defect in service of process is routine, and if the procedures are somehow defective at all levels, is not the city attorney routinely responsible for advising everyone concerned what changes must be made in defective routines? We are standing by for answers to those questions at deadline.

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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Sharron Lewis Miami Style staging by Elizabeth Calomiris for ICON Unit 1801

GETTING AHEAD OF THE JOB CON AT THE SOUTH BEACH ICON

3 July 2012 By David Arthur Walters THE MIAMI MIRROR Miami Beach Suite 1801 at the ICON at 450 Alton Road in South Beach offers a perfect example of how a general contractor can get and complete a construction project without a license or a permit, and make plenty of money for himself as well as a small fortune for a speculator on a single condominium remodeling project. An exemplary photograph of one of the completed rooms in Suite 1801 appears today on the main webpage of Sharron Lewis Design Central. (see above) The unit had been foreclosed on and thoroughly trashed when lead residential designer Elizabeth Calomiris, who had been engaged by the late Sharron Lewis to carry on her Miami Style for the company, designed the outstanding renovation. Jihad Doujeiji, Sharron Lewis bereaved husband, owner and sole manager of the furniture manufacturing, interior design, and
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

construction operations, arrived with his crew and worked Ms. Calomiris wonders under the heading of one of his familys cover firms, Audy Group LLC, whose publicly listed members are the three brothers, namely Jihad, Imad, and Zeyad. Audy Group LLC billed the owners real estate agentBragi Sigurdsson, then broker and part owner of Sigurdsson Schechter Luxury Real Estate, now with prestigious Sothebysnearly $80,000 for the construction. Sharron Lewis Design Central billed about $87,000 for the furnishings, for a grand total of $167,000. Mr. Sigurdssons principal, Gerald Jonas, trustee for the federally qualified profit sharing plan of Jonas Builders, Inc., a Wisconsin construction and real estate company, had purchased the wrecked condominium from First Bank Puerto Rico on December 15, 2010, for $1,800,000, and sold it on June 13, 2011, for $3,400,000, leaving a gross profit of $1,600,000. Deducting $167,000 for renovations, and estimated commissions of $ 170,000, would leave the profitsharing plan a net of $1,263,000 less Mr. Jonas expenses for administration. An additional finders fee in merchandise may have been paid by the contractor directly to Mr. Sigurdsson, the owners fiduciary, as is customary in these deals, hopefully with the knowledge of the owner and the IRS. Such is the magic of good marketing, interior design, and remodeling. Whats not to like? We do not begrudge anyone their profits. A fact that you may not like if you are public-spirited is that neither Gerald Jonas, nor Audy Group LLC dba Audy Construction, nor any of its member including Jihad Doujeiji had a general contracting license. Mr. Doujeijis wife, Sharron Lewis of Sharron Lewis Design, had one when the contract was signed in January 2011, which was prior to her tragic death from cancer in March 2011 after a protracted painful illness. Mr. Doujeiji failed to notify the Contractors License Board of her death and continued to present himself qualified to contract under her license number. But at this juncture we shall not stand on formalities given the fact of Mr. Doujeijis emotional distress and confusion during the ICON remodeling. Instead, we shall assume that his critically ill wife was supervising his construction activities. The point here is that, according to Beatriz Dooley of the City of Miami Beach, the construction work on ICON 1801 was not permitted, despite the fact that the owner/developer in charge, Gerald Jonas, is a seasoned Wisconsin contractor who should have known better. But how would the contractor and furniture company get into the building? Where there is a will, there is a way to take care of building management, perhaps out of the Money Truckmore on that elsewhere. Or one may slip into the building presenting false, invalid, or irrelevant certificates of insurance to building managers, who fail to scrutinize them and call the insurance companies for verification of the type of coverage, if any. Of course Miami Beach Building Department inspectors who are around from time to time must also be managed or taken care of effectively. We seriously doubt whether Jihad Doujeiji and Gerald Jonas were the only persons who avoided permit fees at the ICON, a 40-story condominium complex with about 240 residences, which are at least 90% occupied; that is, if the current promotional rhetoric for the nations Ground Zero for the real estate condo collapse (Miami area) is accurate. The City of Miami Beach provided
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

Miami Mirror with a history of building permits for the building. There are a mere handful of minor violations noticed on that spreadsheet for the residences themselves. The units were provided builder-ready, meaning the spaces had walls but were otherwise bare except for bathroom and kitchen fixtures, and in some cases shiny flooring resembling linoleum, all of the quality that upscale buyers would rather get rid of in the renovation process. Now the most frequent addition or replacement is the flooring, for which a permit is rather easy to get, especially if you pay a permit fixer to get priority when time is of the essence. As we have seen in Getting Ahead of The Job Con at the Continuum, Mr. Doujeiji, acting as an unlicensed general contractor, had his permit fixer line up a flooring specialty contractor for Continuum Unit 2602 as 50 South Pointe Drive, and then the Doujeiji crew laid down the floor that was permitted to the license contractor, but went on to build out the rest of the unit without a permit. Apparently this is one of those everybody does it violations, the getting ahead of the job violation for which one might get a traffic ticket if caughtthe fact that there is an advertised double-permit fee for the unpermitted portion of the work is only a slight disincentive when millions of dollars in construction contracts are in the works. At the ICON, we count around 150 flooring permits, and roughly 50 permits for the renovations that most wealthy people and savvy real estate flippers would desire. We leave it to competent statisticians to estimate the extent of non-permitted renovations among the units that pulled flooring permits. We estimate that the City of Miami Beach lost up to $1,000,000 in potential permit fees on that tower alone, some of which could be secured if the building were professionally audited. Extrapolate that among the total new condominium units in Miami Beach and the total loss may approach $50,000,000. That sounds like grand larceny; however, to the best of our knowledge, no arrests have been made for defrauding the municipality of its dues and perhaps safety to boot. What is the other side of the story? Does anyone care? Is not the government fair game, an enemy to be starved to death if possible? If we would not begrudge anyone their profits, so what if the rich are getting richer at the governments expense? The owner and his lawyer are not answering questions either, not in writing. Sharron Lewis Design staff refers all questions about permits, construction, licenses and the like to the manager, Jihad Doujeiji. Still, gossip is circulating all over town, some claims have been made and complaints filed, for apparently he has made some people awfully sore. Mr. Doujeiji has not responded to requests for a written or video explanation of his contracting exploits; the scuttlebutt is that he is claiming that a nosy reporter is trying to keep him from making money, and he cannot understand why anyone would hate him that much. But Jihad in particular is not hated: evil is hated; to extirpate evil is our jihad. The best of all possible worlds is desired for all, or at least the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The truth must be told to bring that about, for he who ignores evil is good for nothing. We have had enough prosecutorial discretion in the name of liberty, for discretion has established another tyranny of the arrogant who think they own the law. What is wanted is righteous administration, that all have unity in just laws, that they be treated fairly and rewarded according to their merits. Fees and penalties should be collected. Wrongdoers should be reformed or punished.
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

The Miami Mirror asked Building Department officials to look into the ICON situation on June 20, and to advise what will be done about it; for example, follow the published procedure, get the unpermitted work permitted or redone, collect double permit fees on some or all of the around $80,000 in construction. An audit of the entire Icon building was recommended to quality control manager Linda Blanco. We noted that our ICON example appertains to the same unlicensed contractor, permit fixer, and owner as at 1800 Sunset Harbour TS3, where work had been ordered stopped because the enormous amount of construction completed did not match the work permitted, the demolition of an imaginary bathroom/kitchen! That location will be address in Getting Ahead of The Job Con at Sunset Harbour. Miami Beach officials are mute on the Icon as of this writing. Perhaps an investigation is pending, or perhaps nothing at all is being done in hopes that nosy reporters will go away. ##

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The 2.4 acres next to the Doujeiji property marked off for proposed $20 million high rise development

GETTING AHEAD OF THE JOB CON AT 1601 NE 2ND AVE By David Arthur Walters Unlicensed general contractor Jihad Doujeiji dba Sharron Lewis Design Central had gotten ahead of every luxury condominium job we had investigated thus far on South Beach. He got away with not pulling a permit at all at Icon 1801. At Continuum 2602, he had a licensed contractor pull a flooring permit, then his crew went in, laid down the floor and did a thorough nonpermitted renovation of the apartment. Most amazing of all, his trusty permit fixer, Trusty Rusty, got him a license number to piggyback on at Sunset Harbour TS3, and then had a permit pulled to demolish an imaginary kitchen and bathroom in a completely empty space, where Mr. Doujeiji had his crew complete nearly a half-million dollars building out the space before we convinced the Building Department to conduct an investigation and issue a stop work order. Mr. Doujeiji, when exposed, claimed that he was only doing what everybody does, getting ahead of the job, therefore we dubbed our investigative series the Getting Ahead of The Job Con. Go in small and come out big, catch me if you can, the penalty is just a traffic ticket. How did he get away with it? The owners like the work he does, but is he a genius? Our investigation of the matter with scandal-rocked Building Department of the City of Miami Beach revealed that there exists a virtual honor system for permitting luxury condominium build-outs and renovations. Apparently enforcement during the building boom was far beyond the ability
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and competence of city officials. Untold millions in dollars in permit fees were probably being evaded with an unknown increase in safety hazards. But never mind, for the public feels no pain for what it does not yet know. City officials were mute to many of our questions and suggestions, although they appear to be exercising what they call due process behind the scenes. We took our investigation of the exemplary South Beach contractor to the City of Miami, where we discovered from public records that Mr. Doujeiji and his brothers own several apartment buildings that provide them with a considerable currency flow despite numerous evictions due to the nature of tenancy in the respective locations. The crown jewel is their four-story apartment and office building at 1601 NE 2nd Avenue, sitting on the advantageous corner of an otherwise vacant block of real estate near fine hotels, and poised for high rise residential and commercial development as the northeastern edge of the downtown area advances along the gentrification path to and thru the art district. The Miami-Dade County Appraiser put the taxable value of the property, purchased in 2002 from Miami Milano Corporation for $1.7 million, at nearly $2.5 million in 2011. ZJ Audy Investments LLC, holding the property for brothers Jihad, Imad, and Zeyad, has mortgaged it to the BPD Bank of New York, the stated value of the mortgage being $3.4 million as of 4 November 2011. We estimated its market value to be around $5 million given grand development schemes for the neighborhood including a potential high rise development around the building. However, Henry R. Block, Vice President of Jack Thomas Inc., the realtor involved in a potential $20 million sale of the 2.4 acre property around the Doujeiji building, suggested our assessment was too enthusiastic. "The property, he said, has a very small footprint, is overpriced and is encumbered with a historical designation. There could be a list made of outparcels to big developments in Miami that held out in anticipation of price appreciation that wound up built around. We'll see." A developer and real estate broker who left the Miami area during the boom, who asked not to be named due to ongoing controversy, said that small footprint means that you have a 40,000 sq. ft. building on about 11,000 sq. ft. of land. As for the notion that the developments front and back would have no bearing on valuedont bet on it! This is why Carnap is not in the real estate speculation business. A search of the public records revealed that Mr. Doujeiji had filed an owners Notice of Commencement for construction at 1601 NE 2nd Avenue, listing his late wife, Sharron Lewis, as contractor. Her general contractor license was no longer valid due to her death in March 2011. No notice of death was given to the Florida Board of Contractors as required by law so that work permitted under her license might be legally completed. According to the countys website, all permits issued for the renovation of the historic building are expired, the latest expiration dates being in October 2011. Occupants of the apartment building, which houses Mr. Doujeijis Sharron Lewis Design Central showroom, said there had been continuous renovations ongoing in the building even after March 2011, usually at night and on the weekends. Tenants complained about the noise, and at least one longtime tenant to the north of the internal courtyard had moved out due to the din. The apartments, we learned, were being completely made over, including installation of new windows at an estimated cost of about $25,000 each unit. Furthermore, Sharron Lewis showroom on the first floor had been radically expanded after her death, to
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include the adjacent rental space. That necessitated the demolition of walls, and a kitchen area used by the companys employees.

Jihad Doujeiji, in part inspired by his appreciation of appreciating real estate values and rising cash flow, and also to build a memorial to his beloved wife, has obviously done a great job renovating the building inside and out.

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What Mr. Doujeiji does not appreciate are the licensing and permitting regulations, not to mention other governmental impediments to getting ahead in United States, something many capitalists abhor but comply with. We can understand his distaste for government interference given his origin in Lebanon, and the relative freedom he must have enjoyed in Greece, where he made a small fortune as a master plasterer. Yet we have more formal ways of doing things in America, of which Miami is a part even though it has peculiarities alien to the norm, and proudly competes for the title of Most Corrupt City in America. Nevertheless, we are preoccupied with the proper way of filling out legal forms, especially if they are sworn to, and otherwise abiding by the rules, although the same thing might be accomplished without them at far less expense until the physical and moral structures collapse. It is clear all ready from our examination of the volume of business Mr. Doujeiji is doing, his contacts with high end clients and their brokers, the quality of his construction, the talent of his furniture manufacturers and design staff, that he would have a more prosperous thriving business if he treated his employees well, hired a savvy controller/general manager, and complied with the stupid rules to do things the right way instead of the stupid way. For that some disciplining would be required. We contacted Carlos Ollet, a contractor licensing investigator with the Enforcement Section, Miami-Dade County Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources, and Reinaldo Benitez, head compliance inspector for the City of Miami, for information about allegations of ongoing unlicensed and non-permitted construction at the site. We were informed that there was some history of complaints and suspected violations. Mr. Benitez assured us that one day he would catch up with the alleged perpetrator of the violations alleged. On June 22 he was informed that a large dumpster was going to be pulled up, late on Friday afternoon or early Saturday morning, to dispose of construction debris from the renovation of a floor of apartments in the north section of the building, and that the debris was currently stacked behind the door on the south side of the building. Evidently a great deal of construction activity was planned for the weekend, he was told, and therefore he could make a coup. Mr. Benitez said he dropped by that Friday afternoon before he went home for the weekend, and saw nothing but two bucketsthey were placed to reserve space for the dumpster, which arrived after his departure. He said he could not schedule a team to inspect the premises until the following week. Mr. Doujeijis crews perform the major work in the building on evenings and weekends because there is no enforcement during those hours. Extreme caution must be exercised during the daytime on weekdays, with work such as painting kept inside and other work kept very quiet. According to observers who do not want to be identified for obvious reasons unless they are questioned by sworn law enforcement officers or commanded to speak by the authorities, Jihads brother Zeyad usually stands guard or is nearby whenever construction is in progress. This is not the typical behavior of folks who are licensed and have permits. The tipsters were correct: major construction took place that Saturday while the regulators were off duty. A dozen workmen were observed "crawling all over the place" inside and out, throwing studs and drywall out of the second and third floor windows onto the ground in the northeast area
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of the building, where the view of the debris and a stack of new drywall was partly occluded by a tree. Another stack of drywall was clearly visible inside the front gate of the building. The debris in the back was then picked up, carried ant-like and dumped into the huge dumpster brought in for the purpose. Laborers were also carrying out garbage bags full or debris, including broken up drywall, out of the double doors on the 16th Street side of the building. Workmen were using chisels to smooth out stucco around newly installed windows. A great deal of noise was being made by nailing inside of the apartments. An effort was made in the late that afternoon to contact a City of Miami compliance officer or building inspector, only to discover that none were on duty for the weekend. The police department was persuaded to send an officer out to ascertain if the crime of unlicensed contracting was possibly being committed. Hopefully a report could be made with enough information about the construction activity to enable the absent inspectors to get a warrant to inspect the inside of the apartments for unpermitted construction during the inspectors working hours. Police Officer Lopez reported from the scene at 6:47 PM. He said that the crew was just leaving the site when he arrived. He said he saw large garbage bags piled up in the 20 foot dumpster, but he did not want to climb up on the eight foot high bin to see what was in the bags. He said he did not go inside the building. Since he did not see anyone actually working, he said he had no cause to write a police report, thus dashing hopes for enough official information to warrant a further investigation. We were further informed that drywall was installed by a dozen men on Sunday, and that the bin had been picked up and pulled away by Monday morning. Mr. Benitez and his team of inspectors showed up on Tuesday, June 26, and walked around the building. A fire inspector came into the office, allegedly laughed out loud, said there was nothing for him to look at, and walked out. A fire alarm company had been around for a day or two the previous week, perhaps adjusting the alarms due to the reconfigurations of the apartments. The fire inspector was identified from photographs as a famous fireman who had previously visited the building during construction and was allegedly amused by debris blocking an exit door in the back of the showroom, which leads to the apartment area. Although that door was always open during office hours until Mr. Doujeiji became aware of the investigations, none of the inspectors allegedly attempted to open it. During the course of the teams inspection, Mr. Doujeiji was observed circling the building. He would soon announce to everyone within earshot that he recognized the inspectors because they were his friends, but he worried that they had gotten through the back door of the showroom. He said that some of the new windows were not permitted, but that everything else was perfectly legal. Mr. Benitez asked if we had any photographs of the activity. No, photos could not be taken because Zeyad was guarding the site and telescopic cameras were not available. He said his team had walked around the building, that all the doors were tried and were locked, and no new construction was evident except a little in the showroom, which is being taken care of. He said that plans would have to be compared to whatever existed, which was a difficult process. Although we had previously informed him how windows newly installed on the north side of the

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building were blacked out with white canvass to conceal construction inside the apartments, he said then windows are permitted, and there are no new windows.

On Wednesday June 27 Mr. Benitez asked again if we had any photographic evidence of violations, saying, Hey, if you come up with any hard evidence, please do not hesitate to send it (images speak thousands of words.) We suggested he check the video surveillance tapes of a nearby building. He would have taken plenty of photos himself if only had been present on the weekend after being alerted to the impending activity. A member of Sharron Lewis staff, who is no longer with the company, was allegedly ordered to take measurements and make drawings of the completed construction in the showroom, according to some kind of official list, because Mr. Doujeiji allegedly said that he had to deliver them to the city by the next day. He apparently has a habit of telling everyone within earshot of his business: he allegedly complained that his friends at the city asked him what he had done to make a reporter mad enough to call them again and again and day every day. When we called Mr. Benitez on June 29, he grew hostile and again said no violations were found besides the little ones in the showroom. However, when we asked him for a copy of his teams report, he said, after having previously referring us to an information clerk, that there was no report because no violations at all had been found. The clerk did not respond to our public record request and follow up. Neither Mr. Benitez nor the fire inspector responded to the opportunity we afforded to rebut our assessment that the team inspection was staged or rigged so that no violations would be found. We invited Mr. Doujeiji to come clean, to report faithless inspectors, and to follow the laws. Our experience with a subsequent inspection by Miami Dade Countys licensing inspectors gave us cause to balance our negative evaluation of the city inspectors with the possibility that they had simply been outsmarted. Or perhaps Sharron Lewis spirit is guarding the site. The fire inspector may have forgotten to scowl so as not to be deemed friendly to violators, and Mr. Benitez may

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have been irritated by someone other than his boss looking over his shoulder and secondguessing him. As fate would have it, the countys contractor licensing investigators decided to inspect the site for unlicensed activity on July 27. A painter showed up in the courtyard of the building earlier that morning. He said thirty new windows stacked in the hall in back had been removed from an apartment upstairs so that it could be painted. At 2:35pm, an observer said he saw three inspectors arrive, but there was no construction going on at the time because Zeyad must have been alerted somehow to the inspection, maybe by the marked county car when it pulled up. Three inspectors, two men and one woman, were seen by tenants going around the building earlier, and were noticed in front of the building addressing a blonde woman who works in the showroom, and handing her a business card. Inspector Carlos Ollet soon informed us that the inspectors had walked the halls on all floors of the building and had found no evidence of alleged violations. We had someone check to see if the windows were still stacked up in the backthey had been removed. We speculated that the painters had showed up early in the morning, finished painting by noon, returned the windows to the apartment where they were stored, and went on to another job. It was too far of a stretch to imagine that the brothers constitute a criminal organization that has managed to pervert both Miami-Dade County and the City of Miami. It is easier to believe the brothers are crafty-dodgers who have had great luck outsmarting the inspectors. Mr. Ollets supervisor, Jose Lezcano, affirmed that no construction activity had been seen. An earlier conversation with him led us to opine that they were by no means the only crafty dodgers around given the fact that it is human nature to take what you can get away with in a competitive society. After all, government interference in the economy is an evil thing, is it not? Violations are probably running rife all over town because enforcement forces are understaffed. Each agency including the state has only a handful of enforcement officers, mostly unsworn. The county licensing inspection unit, for example, has only six men to cover the whole county. We told Mr. Lezcano that it would be an easy matter to sting Mr. Doujeiji for unlicensed contracting by having undercover agents pose as an owner and realtor, inviting him to a vacant penthouse condominium to bid on a contract, or to just approach him in his office, where he broadcasts that he is a contractor. The State Department of Business and Profession Regulation bragged how it stung some poor slob upstate after he answered an ad, how he was sat down in handcuffs to cry and wonder how he was going to feed his wife in kids. Yet an unlicensed contractor can do business with some of the wealthiest home owners in the world with impunity. Mr. Lezcano pointed out that he had only six men to cover the whole county, that funds had been cut, and that there were no funds now for what I called proactive enforcement involving the participation of the police, which he termed reverse enforcement, explaining that normal enforcement involved complaints from owners who had been harmed by contractors. Affluent owners seem satisfied with this contractors performance thus far. The public will be none too pleased, however, to know that he and a legion of like-minded contractors have cheated their government out of millions of dollars of permit fees.
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Typical Sharron Lewis Miami Style by Elizabeth Calomiris

GETTING AHEAD OF THE JOB CON AT THE CONTINUUM

July 2, 2012 David Arthur Walters The Miami Mirror The scheme is simple: go in small and come out big. That is what unlicensed general contractor Jihad Doujeiji dba Sharron Lewis Design Central did in 3,000 sq. ft. condominium 2602 at the famous South Beach Continuum at 50 South Pointe Drive. Mr. Doujeiji presented himself as a general contractor to the owner, contracted to renovate the apartment, and had him sign, under penalties of perjury, a blank permit application on June 22, 2011, in effect affirming nothing at all, which is a standard procedure declared to be appropriate by City of Miami Beach Assistant City Attorney Rhonda Montoya Hasan. Mr. Doujeiji then had a permit fixer or expeditor line up a licensed specialty flooring contractor to sign the application on August 29, 2011. It is believed that the flooring contractor did not lay or supervise the laying of the floor, and that his end of the deal was supplying the materials. Absent the help of a permit fixer or expeditor, obtaining a permit from the City of Miami Beach may take two
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or more months. The permit fixer filed the application on August 30 and it was approved that day. The total value of the flooring work stated to the City of Miami Beach was only $20,100, yet an $80,000 deposit was made in July 2011 to Sharron Lewis Design for the flooring work only. The billing date for the flooring, completed in 2011, was subsequently changed to March 1, 2012, allegedly for revenue recognition purposes, perhaps to delay the payment of taxes. The actual value of all construction including the flooring was $250,000. Furnishings were additional. Jihad Doujeiji was husband to the late Sharron Lewis, an interior designer and furniture manufacturer famed for her Miami Style. They were involved in the design and construction of South Beach restaurants, which is perhaps how they met. Companions for nearly ten years, they married about a year before her death. She had obtained a general contracting license for herself and Sharron Lewis Design Central, in effect legalizing Mr. Doujeijis contracting activities since he then worked under her supervision. Shortly before her death from cancer in March 2011, she hired residential interior designer and artist Elizabeth Calomiris, formerly of Washington, D.C., to carry on her design work at Sharron Lewis Design Central, located in downtown Miami, beside Ms. Lewis longtime designer and buyer, Jorge Hernandez, and other talented staff. Mr. Doujeiji, a native of Lebanon who ventured to Greece and made his fortune in the drywall business before immigrating to the United States, owns with his brothers nearly 200 apartments in the Miami area, which provide their enterprises with a considerable flow of hard currency. He has had several encounters with regulators involving his construction activities, but few if any troubles with property owners. In fact, he is known for hiring talented construction workers, many of them illegal aliens, as is the tradition in Miami-Dade County, and for doing excellent work, the main complaint from owners being over scheduling and pricing. His furniture factory and office workers, on the other hand, have complained about his management style and methods of payment, and the Labor Department was successful in one suit against him. He failed to notify the Contractors Licensing Board of his wifes death, and continued to present himself as Jihad Doujeiji, Sharron Lewis Design Central, Construction Division, Lic# CGC 1507095. An anonymous complaint was filed against him for unlicensed contracting, for which he was cited, yet he continued as before; he is spiritually inclined, and allegedly believes that his late wifes spirit if not her license is watching over him. He is obviously qualified by his experience. Difficulties with the English language is not be an impediment for obtaining a contracting license in Florida since the exam can be taken orally, but the ability to think abstractly, curtailed by long years of concrete thinking on construction jobs, may be problematic to an old hand. Although practicing construction without a license can be a crime in Florida, the second offense being a felony, that sort of prosecution is very rare indeed, the civil remedy usually being pursued, the consequence being a small fine referred to as a traffic ticket. What is a thousanddollar or even a ten-thousand-dollar fine compared to millions in revenue? But the absence of a license is really beside the point here: the Getting Ahead of the Job Con can be successfully played, and even better played, by licensed contractors, although they will still
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have to pay high fees to permit fixers to get preferential treatment from city officials: the major Miami Beach expeditor is known as Permit Doctors, which maintains an office on city property next to City Hall, a facility that is a virtually an annex of the Building Department,. However, Mr. Doujeiji has reasons to prefer Orestes Rusty Innocenti aka Rusty At The Copy Shop. All of the new luxury condominiums, although builder-ready could use some work. For example, people with the means to inhabit them do not want to live on carpets on concrete floors or on crappy floor covering provided by builders who know upscale people like to do their own flooring. And if you are a speculator, a thorough staging according to the design of people like Sharron Lewis and Elizabeth Calomiris can net you an additional million dollars in short order, as we shall show elsewhere. So the most common permit pulled in a condominium tower is the flooring permit. Get one of those to get your foot in the door, and then rapidly build out the empty space, saving the permit fees for the additional work, work that the inspectors may not notice if the inspectors are managed properly, for they will be looking at the floor. If tagged, just say, Look, I was just getting ahead of the job, everybody does it, the only consequence for the attempted grand theft of permit fees that the city is entitled to, as advertised by official publicity, will be a double-permit fee on the additional work, and that might be waived by your friends at the Building Department, perhaps with the help of your friendly expeditor. What a deal! One might be arrested for criminal fraud in other fields of endeavor, but construction is a world of its own: Its the culture, stupid. The Miami Mirror has reason to believe and intends to argue from statistics that the City of Miami Beach failed to collect millions of dollars in permit fees during the building boom, much of that due to the negligence and incompetence of the city government including the city manager, the city attorney, officials at the building department, and the city commission. Not to mention corruption. The Miami Mirror suggested to Antonio Gonzalez, Operations Manager of the Building Department, that the owners of 50 South Pointe Drive be contacted to identify the de facto general contractor they were dealing with and to ascertain the scope of the work actually done. He advised on April 11 that, The permit was applied for on 8/30/2011 and approved on the same day. The permit is currently expired awaiting a final inspection. A sub-permit (BP111937) was secured to remove and reinstall a toilet and allow the flooring installation. The latter received a Final Inspection approval on 10/06/2011. But his boss, Director Stephen Scott, subsequently said, on April 30, that no inspection is warranted when a permit was expired: The permit expired on April 29, 2012 as per the Florida Building Code which states Every permit issued shall become invalid unless the work authorized by such permit is commenced within six months after its issuance, or if the work authorized by such permit is suspended or abandoned for a period of six months after the time the work is commenced. Since there is no longer an active permit, no inspections may be scheduled. God only knows how Mr. Gonzalez knew when the work was suspend or abandoned, because it may have been ongoing when he issued his pragma. Inasmuch as blank permit applications are
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sworn to and filled in as needed, and plans are approved on their face value; inasmuch as no certificates of completion are required; inasmuch as inspectors have to be called in to make an inspection;it appears that permitting in the City of Miami Beach is done on a honor basis. It would be far simpler and less expensive then to just sell permits at the permit window and trust people to do the right thing. Interestingly, if the City officials had bothered to contact the owners when first asked to confirm the information the Miami Mirror had obtained from the public records, they might have saved themselves tens of thousands of dollars, because unlicensed contractors do not have to be paid and cannot place liens. But that would have been an unethical thing to do, unless there were some costs associated with the conduct that could be deducted from any balance due. The Miami Mirror shall soon show how Mr. Doujeiji has contracted other jobs, and is continuing to contract, with the help of his permit fixer, without a general contracting license, right under the noses of state, county, and municipal authorities, who are fully aware of his activities by now, and other examples of the Getting Ahead of The Job Con will also be exposed. ##

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