128. The Charade (Scott W. Rothstein)

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When we talked about it, neither one of us wanted a gun,

but we both, you know, she was living alone, so she felt she needed something to, and, you know, I was going through a difficult divorce, so, and, you know, living on my own as well.

And I decided on a taser and she decided on pepper spray.

Deborah Viegas' best friend and co-worker, Melissa Britt Lewis, failed to show up at the office on March 6, 2008.

No one had seen or heard from Missy since the previous evening, sparking instant concern.

Going off the radar like this was entirely out of character for the 39-year-old Rising Star attorney.

I'd been trying to contact her.

It was already strange that I hadn't heard from her.

And then as appointments were showing up and she wasn't there,

Deborah talked to Melissa every day, every hour, almost.

The two women had grown inseparable since meeting at a law firm nine years earlier.

Melissa was starting her career as a young lawyer, and Deborah was starting over.

The two had bonded over their rough upbringings.

Melissa had an alcoholic father and was forced to drop out of high school to take care of the family.

Deborah had an alcoholic mother and lived in 52 different homes, including a truck in Texas.

By the time she was a teenager, both had survived unmentionable horrors.

It felt good to have someone to depend on finally.

Melissa and Deborah served as each other's crutches through life's up and downs, work stressors, Deborah's cancer, Melissa's divorce, Deborah's pending divorce.

She's the only person in my life who has actually loved me and has been good to me, Deborah said about her best friend.

With that mutual support, the pair thrived both personally and professionally.

Deborah Viegas had recently been promoted the chief operating officer of Rothstein-Rosenfeld Adler, one of the largest law firms in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after starting out as a paralegal with no college degree.

Melissa Lewis had just been made a partner at the same firm, marking the first time a female had achieved that milestone.

She ultimately wanted to become a judge and was well on her way.

So again, Melissa not showing up for work unannounced was strange.

Deborah was worried and called the cops in Plantation, the suburb where her friend lived.

Melissa's sister met the cops at the house with the key to let them in, but when they arrived at the garage door was already open.

However, Melissa wasn't home and her black Cadillac was missing.

Inside the garage, there were numerous signs of foul play.

There were bagged groceries on the floor, a single brown button from a coat.

and pepper spray on the walls and the doggy door.

George, Melissa's bull terrier, was found found alive inside the home, but it was evident he had been maced.

It was also evident that this wasn't a robbery case, as the cops prematurely assumed.

Nothing from the house had been taken.

Plantation PD retraced Melissa Lewis's steps from the day before using surveillance footage.

She left work at 7 p.m., stopped at a Publix grocery store, and then called her 11-year-old niece on the way home.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

That afternoon, investigators used the OnStar GPS system installed in Melissa's car to track it down and unlock it.

They found it parked at a medical plaza within walking distance of her house.

Again, Melissa was nowhere to be seen.

The car's trunk, however, contained additional concerns.

Melissa's dress shoes, a brown suit jacket missing a button, and bloodstains.

It was difficult not to assume the worst.

The next morning, March 7, 2008, the worst was confirmed.

A maintenance worker for the South Florida Water Management District responded to a report about a clogged grating system at a water pump in the New River Canal and plantation.

That worker raked at the debris and discovered that the cause of the backup was a dead body, which was floating face up, wearing a flowered shirt and brown suit pants.

Workers discovered Lewis' body floating in this plantation canal.

The results of Melissa Lewis's autopsy revealed that she had been beaten and strangled, something that was impossible to reconcile for her friends and family.

If not a robbery, what could possibly be the motive?

Melissa was not the kind of person to have violent enemies.

The only lead investigators had was Melissa's cell phone, even though it was never recovered.

The cellular data revealed that it kept moving, pinging off different towers long after her presumed death.

On the night of the murder, the phone remained in place overnight in Miami Gardens, 30 minutes away from the crime scene, but resumed its travels the following morning.

The plantation police consulted those closest to Melissa.

Do you know anyone who lives in Miami Gardens?

Yes, I do, Deborah Viegas told them.

My ex-husband.

Tony Viegas had a history of abuse, according to Deborah.

She said he had duct taped her daughter's mouth shut when she was a toddler.

He once forced another child to sleep in a dog crate.

Tony would throw toys at the kids if the rooms weren't clean enough.

Sometimes Deborah would come home to find electrical cord markings on the backs of her children's legs.

If Deborah was stuck at work late, she would walk out of her office to find Tony waiting for her in the parking garage.

He was incredibly paranoid and jealous, she said.

Tony once told Deborah that if she ever tried to leave him, he'd feed her to the alligators and she'd never be found.

For the longest time, Deborah felt trapped.

I felt like I didn't have anywhere to go.

I had no family here, no friends.

And then Melissa Lewis came into her life, giving her the strength to make a move.

The last straw came when Tony smacked their 10-year-old son in the head with a textbook because his homework was taking too long.

When Deborah's adult daughter, Amy, tried to intervene, Tony threw her across the room and, quote, bounced her like a basketball on her pregnant stomach.

After 15 long years of marriage, Deborah Viegas filed for divorce in July 2007.

Melissa Lewis was there to lift her up.

She's my mom's backbone, Amy told the police.

My mom, without Melissa, she wouldn't have ever left him.

Melissa was truly going above and beyond, even though she was heartbroken about her own marriage, which ended that same year.

But Deborah was in a more precarious situation.

Tony was unhinged.

Since moving out, Tony had broken into Deborah's truck, put water in her gas tank, left dead animals on her porch, and threatened to set her on fire.

One time, Deborah awoke in the middle of the night to find her estranged husband standing over her, laughing.

After that, Deborah bought a taser.

Melissa bought pepper spray.

Melissa also sent an email to some of her lawyer friends in December 2007 that asked, How hard is it to do a will?

My friend Deborah is going through a divorce.

Her ex-husband is nuts.

To be on the safe side, she wants to be sure she designates who gets her children if he hurts her and goes to jail.

Seems extreme, but you have no idea what is going on, and restraining orders are worthless.

So, all things considered, the detectives asked Deborah, do you think Tony might have killed Melissa?

She wasn't convinced.

I mean, I could probably count on one hand the number of times that they had a face-to-face contact.

Tony liked Melissa, Deborah told the police.

They've never had a crossword between them.

There was no ill-will.

However, Tony and Deborah's son Caleb suggested otherwise, telling detectives that his father blamed Melissa for ending his marriage.

Quote, Melissa got a divorce from her husband the same time as my mom and dad got a divorce, so we thought it was planned for a while, like they were planning to get a divorce at the same time.

Is that motive enough to kill her?

Maybe.

Is it proof?

Hardly.

So Plantation PD kept chugging along, just like the train Tony Viegas had conducted for the Florida East Coast Railway for the past 20 years.

Coincidentally, the day after Melissa Lewis was murdered, detectives noticed that her missing phone pinged off every cell tower on Tony's train route.

Investigators obtained more damning information when they questioned Tony's roommate.

Will Set Pasquale said he returned to their shared apartment around 11.30 the night in question to find Tony in the bathroom scrubbing his arms.

What happened?

Wilson asked.

Tony said he had been rummaging through some moving boxes when a can of pepper spray exploded on him.

How do I get it off?

Tony asked.

I don't know, Wilson replied.

Check the internet.

So that's what Tony did, and his search history proved it.

At this point, detectives had enough to bring Tony Viegas in for questioning.

It had been four days since Melissa's body had been found.

He immediately dismissed the jealousy and revenge theory.

You guys ever have any problems, problems, maybe?

Something like that?

Never.

Never.

I don't think I ever spoke to her more than two words Do you know if she's had anything to do with what you're going through right now with Deborah and the divorce?

I don't know.

And

I really don't care.

I mean, I don't know.

That wouldn't bother you if she did.

I don't know.

The thing is, I just want to get away from my wife.

I just want to be at peace.

The entries in Tony's makeshift diary told a different story.

He wrote about how much he missed his family, how he had seen Deborah making out with some guy in the parking lot of a bar.

Remember, Tony, he wrote to himself, she don't love you.

She laughing at you.

A few times I picked up my kids.

She had a guy in town.

So

I always told her, I don't like

flies on my meat.

Finally, the detectives asked Tony Viegas point-blank if he had anything to do with the murder of Melissa Lewis and then confronted him with the evidence.

Do you have anything to do with

Melissa's death?

No.

Her phone,

after it was stolen,

drove to the area of your house and stayed there overnight

and came to work with you the next day and traveled north with the train because the train that's GPS on a dozen.

It was on the train, okay?

That someone else here knows Melissa,

lives in your house, comes to work with you.

You had the phone.

Okay?

Listen, I'll be honest with you.

This doesn't look very good for you, but I don't even know her.

A few days after the police interviewed Tony Viegas, forensic testing revealed that his DNA had been found on Melissa's suit jacket in no less than 16 spots.

Almost like he'd sneezed or coughed after getting maced.

Tony was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on March 15th, 2008.

I have an overwhelming amount of guilt for it, Deborah Viegas said after their arrest.

I know that I didn't do this to her, but because of me, it happened to her.

I'm who he was mad at.

Why not me?

My kids are devastated.

They are suffering the loss of Melissa to a violent crime, and now they've lost their father.

Because you and I both know we'll never see him again.

Probably not.

The evidence was pretty damning.

However, Tony Viegas' trial was put on hold.

He appeared to be completely unresponsive to his counsel, too depressed to assist in his own defense.

Tony refused to take his medication and would just break down in tears when the case was brought up.

Two forensic psychologists declared him mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Not once, not twice, but three times.

Tony Viegas was in and out of mental hospitals and held without bond for the next six and a half years.

And during that time, something happened that forced everyone to re-examine the murder of Melissa Melissa Lewis in a whole new light.

Melissa's boss, Scott Rothstein, of the eponymous Rothstein-Rosenfeldt-Adler, the man who paid for Melissa's funeral, the man who offered the quarter million dollar reward, the man who showed up in person for every hearing on the case, was convicted of operating one of the largest financial frauds in Florida's history.

Dozens of co-conspirators were implicated, including Deborah Viegas, Melissa's best friend, leading many to wonder: was the young lawyer's death simply the result of a bitter, violent man?

Or perhaps she had known too much?

The Flashy Lawyer's crumbling empire sends ripples through South Florida and beyond on this episode of Swindled.

They bribed government officials to find accounting for your violations of the U.S.

state law earlier in the unethical pay to play in taxpayer dollars that were wasted.

They saved tens

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to SimplySafe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection, designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight, and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com slash swindled.

There's no safe like simply safe.

I'm with Scott Rothstein.

I'm Rothstein and Rosenfeld firm.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

What could be bad here?

Look at this.

This is unbelievable.

It's a great party.

How do you feel tonight?

I feel unbelievable.

It's an unbelievable group.

There is nothing here that would have happened without all these people here.

They're absolutely incredible.

I'm blessed to have the greatest group of lawyers, the greatest support staff.

It's what it's all about.

This is really all for them.

This has nothing to do with me.

I would never be here if it wasn't for them.

Scott Walter Rothstein was just another run-of-the-mill attorney in Southeast Florida for almost a decade and a half.

Talented and hardworking by all accounts, but nothing special.

The Bronx native bounced around small law firms early in his career, specializing in labor disputes until eventually becoming a partner at Phillips Eisinger Costs in 2000.

That's when, friends say, Scott's personality began to change.

Tailored suits, expensive watches, fancy cars, spiked hair.

Scott Rothstein, in his early 40s, was transforming into the most divorced man ever.

And not just because he was actively going through a divorce with his first wife, which he was, but also because every obnoxious personality trait he had exhibited in the past had become amplified.

Scott's ego seemed to swell in conjunction with his still meager bank account, and his ambition soared.

In February 2002, Rothstein decided to launch his own practice.

Actually, the decision was made for him.

Scott had been fired from Philips Eisinger for ethical lapses, such as lying to a client about filing court documents.

Rothstein did not share this detail with fellow partner Stuart Rosenfeld, whom he convinced to branch out with them.

That wasn't important.

What was important, Scott pitched, is that he would fund the whole venture.

Scott told Stu that he'd been trading stocks since he was a child and had stashed away quite a nest egg.

Plus, Scott noted, he and his ex-wife owned a bunch of lucrative rental properties to which he was entitled.

Neither of these claims was true.

Although undetected at the time, evidence suggests that Scott Rothstein was skimming off the top of his clients' settlements or stealing them entirely.

Had Stuart Rosenfeld known this, he would have never agreed to Scott's proposal, which was that Rothstein would manage the business aspects of their new law firm, including finances, while Rosenfeld, a more seasoned and serious lawyer, would manage the staff.

Initially, the Rothstein-Rosenfeld staff consisted of seven attorneys, including Melissa Britt Lewis, a young lawyer whom Scott had had taught as an adjunct law professor at his alma mater, Nova Southeastern University.

Scott also brought along his favorite, most loyal employee ever, Deborah Viegas.

She had been working with him in an administrative role since day one.

Deborah was like a sister to Scott.

He eventually named her the chief operating officer of the new firm.

When she speaks, she is speaking for me, Rothstein wrote to his staff in an email.

We would not exist without her.

She has come up with me for 14 plus years.

And anyone who knows me, that is an absolutely ridiculous amount of time.

My ex-wife did not put up with me for that amount of time.

In 13 years.

Over the next five years, the Rothstein-Rosenfeld law firm exploded in size.

The managing shareholder, chairman, and CEO of the practice, Scott Rothstein, made decisions on instinct without consulting his partner, Stuart Rosenfeld.

This resulted in unprecedented hiring and acquisition practices that would sometimes double the firm's size overnight.

All bullshit aside, what we do is serious business.

I ran the numbers yesterday.

We are at 167%.

Are you saying that we are on the push to greatness?

Politely, I would say, fuck that.

We all rape.

By the end of 2007, Rothstein's firm had had grown from seven lawyers to 70 lawyers, encompassing a wide array of specialties from civil rights to personal injury.

A civil litigation attorney named Russ Adler was brought on as a partner and included on the marquee.

Rothstein, Rosenfeldt, Adler hired former mayors such as Steve Abrams, former judges including Bill Berger and Barry Stone, former prosecutors like Carlos Reyes, and well-known lobbyists like Grant Smith.

Controversially, RRA even added former Broward Sheriff Ken Ginney to its staff immediately upon his release from prison for a corruption conviction.

As you have to understand, Rothstein's law firm had hired ex-judges, prosecutors, big-name attorneys.

He would bring them in again to enhance his own credibility.

To support this team of lawyers, Rothstein Rosenfeld-Adler employed over 100 administrative staff to house them all, in addition to its satellite offices in other parts of Florida, New York City, and Venezuela, the law firm rented the 40,000 square foot 16th floor of the Bank of America building on Los Olis Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

Scott Rothstein's private office was the crown jewel of the headquarters.

He had a private entrance with a private elevator that opened to a private foyer.

featuring a painting of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone from The Godfather 3.

Once granted access through an intercom and a security-coated door, visitors would be greeted with gorgeous panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean and the scent of rich mahogany.

Or perhaps that was the aroma of his alligator-skinned couch.

I don't know.

Either way, don't get too comfortable.

There were microphones and cameras everywhere in Rothstein's office and a giant 80-inch monitor hidden behind a painting.

Scott could control it all with the buttons on his desk, which were situated next to his $5,000 fountain pen.

Scott Rothstein's extravagant office exemplified his budding and grotesque taste for the finer things in life, but it only offered a small glimpse.

Unorthodox as it may have been, Rothstein Rosenfeld Adler's business model appeared to work.

Scott Rothstein's personal net worth soared from six figures to tens of millions of dollars in a few short years.

You could probably tell just by looking at him.

Scott Rothstein stood out in a crowd, even in southeast Florida.

He would show up at the trendiest spots in Fort Lauderdale, driving a million-dollar Bugatti, having recently upgraded from a Hummer, a different watch on his wrist every night.

And if Scott wasn't wearing one of his $10,000 custom-made suits, he'd be sporting one of those hideous Ed Hardy-style graphic t-shirts over his synthetically faded designer jeans and freshly polished ostrich-skinned boots, usually clinching a big brown cigar between his bleached teeth, usually the loudest person in the room.

And Scott owned a lot of rooms.

Like every other aspect of his life, Scott upgraded his residence in rapid succession.

He moved out of his $1.2 million Castilla Isle starter home to the more expensive house next door, which had belonged to NFL star running back Ricky Williams.

Scott purchased two more properties on the same block for investment purposes.

He also added a couple of houses in Rhode Island and a $6 million high-rise condo in Manhattan to his portfolio.

Scott eventually settled into a $6.4 million 9,200 square foot Harbor Beach waterfront mansion in Fort Lauderdale that featured cheetah print upholstery on the walls and gold toilet lids.

His $5 million 87-foot yacht was docked in the back.

Surprisingly, Scott Rothstein did not own a private jet.

But that did not stop him from chartering private flights for his friends to New York to watch the Miami Dolphins lose.

Scott was a big sports fan.

His law firm spent millions of dollars sponsoring nearly every high-profile event that took place in South Florida, including NFL games, NBA games, the BCS National Championship, and HBO boxing matches.

He wanted to be involved so bad.

In fact, Scott Rothstein, the prolific jock sniffer, purchased a stake in a sports agency to negotiate player contracts.

But that was just one of dozens of companies that he dabbled in.

Scott also bought 30% of a luxury watch company.

He owned equity in two banks and a mortgage company.

He dropped 4.3 million on a cruise line that never made a maiden voyage.

He co-owned a vodka company, a nightclub in Pembroke Pines, and a project management software company called Q Task, which was basically Slack before its time.

Scott Rothstein's most well-known venture, outside of his law firm, however, was his restaurant.

He partnered with a well-known restaurateur named Anthony Bova to purchase Riley McDermott's, an upscale steakhouse which occupied the ground floor below the RRA offices.

They renamed it Bova Prime.

Rothstein reportedly paid $3 million for the eatery, which became his daily hangout.

The previous owner claimed that Scott wired $2.5 million and then stiffed him for the remainder.

It was actually a very easy decision.

My law firm's been representing restaurants for almost 22 years.

And we started representing Tony maybe a year and a half, two years ago.

And I got to tell you, I couldn't think of anybody better to go into business with.

He's just, he's the bomb.

He's got it all down.

And if you want to make money in the restaurant business, this is the guy to go into the business with.

We're going to provide an unbelievable product, an unbelievable place to hang out and enjoy great food and wine and have a great time.

And at the same time, we're going to have a heck of a business venture.

Scott Rothstein, the son of a condom salesman, had come a long way from sharing a bedroom with his sister in the family's modest New York apartment.

But everything about him screamed new money.

Tacky, tasteless, vulgar.

The kind of unrestrained self-indulgence that makes one perform an entire seven-minute song at karaoke.

Fucking asshole.

However, to his credit, Rothstein remained grounded enough to recognize the virtue of paying it forward.

My parents and grandparents taught my sister and me the importance of family, respect for others, the importance of honesty, education, and hard work, and moreover, the mantra of giving back, he later wrote.

We were taught that, as little as we had, there were always those less fortunate.

Scott put his money where his mouth was, reportedly donating over $6 million to charitable organizations in a two-year period, including a $1 million contribution to the Holy Cross Hospital, where a lobby in the medical center was named after him.

Scott was also a heavy donor to the American Heart Association, the Alonso Mourning Charities, and the Dan Marino Foundation.

In fact, there were billboards for the Marino Foundation along I-95 that featured a photo of Scott with the quarterback.

It was the closest Dan Marino ever got to success.

To whom much is given, even so much more is expected.

And we both share that passion and we've both been very blessed in our lives and because of that, we want to give back.

Giving back was a selfless pursuit, but it often created unforgettable moments for Rothstein personally.

For example, after the lawyer donated $100,000 to Don Henley's Caddo Lake Institute, the Eagles drummer dedicated a song to Scott at a concert.

I don't normally do this, Henley said from the stage.

but this goes out to Scott and Princess Kimmy on their one-year wedding anniversary.

And then the Eagles, appropriately, started playing life in the fast lane.

Scott Rothstein married Princess Kimmy, or Kimberly Wendell, on January 26, 2008 to kickstart the greatest year of his life.

Kim was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed bombshell, and those weren't her only unnatural features.

Scott would tell people that he met Kilm at a charity event for the Humane Society, for which his law firm was the platinum sponsor.

No, she did not adopt me at a shelter, he would joke and wait for the uproarious laughter to die down before tagging it with, but I am now well-trained and housebroken.

Kil contradicted that version of events in later interviews.

She said she was a bartender, and Scott was the regular who would persistently ask her out.

One day to everyone's surprise, she agreed and was soon swept off her feet by his kind heart.

He was the right person at the right time, Kilm said, deep in medical debt.

Scott Rothstein proposed to Kilm at his 43rd birthday party.

After a long engagement, they married at the mansion in South Beach where Versace was murdered.

So romantic.

The million-dollar wedding at a star-studded guest list that included Florida's new governor, Charlie Crist.

Rothstein and Christ had met at a Republican fundraiser years earlier when the future governor was campaigning for Attorney General.

That meeting opened the doors and pockets to other GOP heavyweights, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain.

Rothstein hosted fundraisers for both at his home and donated millions of dollars to various Republican candidates.

This is my position.

This is the way I feel.

This is the way the country should be run and I want to be the people's president.

This is why John McCain should be president.

I give you our next president, John McCain.

For all his hard work, Governor Crist appointed Scott Rothstein to the 4th District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission in August 2008.

Rothstein was so honored that he donated an additional $140,000 to the Florida GOP after the announcement.

This followed a $52,000 contribution a month earlier at Charlie Crist's birthday party.

He bought the governor's birthday cake, and it was $1,000 a candle, and he bought 52 candles for Governor Chris.

Turns out, Scott wasn't only getting in bed with the powerful, but the powerless as well.

One of the worst kept secrets about Scott Rothstein, because he would gladly announce it to a room full of people, was that he had fucked every hostess and waitress at his restaurant, Bova Prime.

And those he hadn't, he had definitely tried.

Scott would pay the girls' tuition, their rents, give them jobs at his law firm, send them on vacations, and even bring them aboard his yacht, which he had named Princess Kimberly.

Sleeping with his employees, clerks, secretaries, graduate students, and fellow attorneys was a tradition Scott started early in his career.

It was more about the power than the sex most noticed.

However, there was no shortage of the latter.

Rothstein purchased a $435,000 condo across the street from the RRA office for the sole purpose purpose of fornicating with escorts.

The firm had a $50,000 to $60,000 a month, quote, hooker budget.

Friends, associates, clients, and bigwigs of the firm were all welcome to partake, and most did.

Even stick in the mud Roosevelt was blowing $5,000 a week on his favorite.

Just call it a service we offered, Rothstein said.

We would send a girl up there, and then we'd go up there and do our business and come back to work.

What happens if Rothsey Roosevelt stays at Rothschild?

That's one of the reasons Scott paid for his wife Kim to have a 24-7 bodyguard.

He needed to know her location at all times to avoid being caught with his pants down.

Scott had around-the-clock protection for himself, his restaurant, his home, and his law firm as well.

He paid a rotating cast of 28 off-duty Fort Lauderdale police officers, tens of thousands of dollars per month for the service, a service that had not been offered to anyone before or since.

However, Scott Rothstein had a long, friendly history with the police, dating back to his time representing the police union as a labor attorney, so they made an exception.

Paranoid much.

You can call me whatever you want, Rothstein told the Sun Sentinel.

You can call me paranoid.

You can call me extra security conscious.

But at the end of the day, no one close to me is going to be killed, raped, attacked, harmed, in any way.

so long as I have the ability to provide the extra protection.

Keep in mind, this was soon after his law partner, Melissa Lewis, had been strangled in her garage, so maybe it was justified.

What are material things worth if the people you love are not around you to enjoy them with you?

He asked, introspectively.

Outsiders had other suspicions about Scott's need for the bodyguards.

This guy Rothstein, he has to be involved with the mob or something, right?

First of all, he has a Bronx accent.

Secondly, the math simply didn't add up.

Lawyers make good money, but they don't don't make $30 million in real estate money, at least not as quickly as Rothstein had.

Not to mention it was 2008, in the midst of a recession.

Almost every business in the country, including law firms, was cutting back.

And here was this bloated backstreet boy-looking Rothstein prick, hiring every attorney that shook his hand.

Scott laughed off the criticism that he must be building a, quote, house of cards.

First of all, Rothstein-Rosenfeld-Adler had legitimate clients.

Big clients, including including Citicorp, JCPenney, Wells Fargo, and the Ed Morse Automotive Group.

And he pointed to his other successful endeavors as an explanation for his seemingly, quote, unexplained wealth.

I've had a little luck, a whole lot of blessing, and I have an exceptional knack for picking people to do business with, he told Bob Norman at the Broward New Times.

I invest in real estate and people.

As for the flashiness, the exuberance, the cars, the women, and all that, look, I sleep in the bed I make, he said.

I tend toward the flashy side, but it's a persona.

It's just a fucking persona.

To compete with the big boys, you've got to brand yourself.

In an interview with Buddy Nevins at the Broward Beat, Rothstein addressed the rumors that he was involved with illicit activity.

Quote, My family said that the higher you get on the poll, the more people see your ass, so you better be sure your ass is clean.

My ass is clean.

And yet, Scott Rothstein seemed awfully sensitive to the criticism.

You could often find him responding to comments and articles about himself.

He also infamously called reporter Bob Norman on the phone and threatened to, quote, destroy him and bankrupt his household because Norman had reported factually on a healthcare firm in which Rothstein had invested.

As confident as he seemed on the outside, It sure seemed like Scott Rothstein didn't like anyone digging too deep.

Rothstein would later explain why, Quote: I had neither the client base nor the financial resources nor the requisite skill set to do what I set out to do, but I would not accept a failure.

I became the master self-promoter, lying about everything from the size of the firm to its successes.

I began to live a life both personally and professionally that my business could not support.

I was determined to do whatever I had to do to make it work, which was simply to continue a charade that was, in hindsight, clearly doomed to fail.

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This is part of the Rothstein sanctum or the Rothstein Suite, whatever you would describe it as.

This is a structure of a secretive man.

A paranoids, I'm not a doctor, but but highly secretive

is the only way I could describe it.

I've never seen in my life something where an attorney in the midst of his own law firm, in effect, has this level of security and such limited access to people in theory who are his partners.

But again, it's important to emphasize that the practice of law is outside the sanctum, that the business and most especially the finances of law are here in the walls that you've stepped into.

This is where the evil happens.

Scott Rothstein jokingly told Bob Norman of the Broward New Times as he sat down for an interview at his office desk in October 2008.

Or at least at the time, everybody thought he was joking.

Turns out, in that moment, Rothstein was being honest for once in his life.

About three years earlier, Scott was representing a plaintiff in a sexual harassment lawsuit.

The defendant in the case agreed to settle out of court for $3.5 million, but refused to pay it all at once in a lump sum, instead, preferring a structured monthly payment.

This angered Scott's client, who vowed to reject the offer and proceed the trial.

Rothstein wanted to avoid going to court and risking his attorney's fee.

That's when it dawned on him, a way to make both parties happy.

Rothstein asked his client if they were willing to accept $3 million up front instead of $3.5 million over time.

The client answered yes.

So this was the plan.

Scott would borrow $3 million from an investor to pay the client, and the investor would be repaid with the defendant's monthly settlement payments totaling $3.5 million,

a quick and easy profit of $500,000.

Rothstein couldn't believe no one had thought of this before.

It was like winning the lottery.

Most clients would be happy to take the instant, discounted lump sums.

This was the origin of something huge.

We three kings be stealing the gold.

In 2005, Scott Rothstein started recruiting investors.

The pitch was easy.

As the, quote, preeminent sexual harassment law firm in the country, Rothstein Rosenfeld Adler, deals with a lot of cases in which the defendant, think CEO or executive type, would prefer to avoid making headlines.

In most cases, they would settle out of court without a fuss.

In other cases, Rothstein explained to investors that he would bring the accused into his office and question them about their alleged transgressions.

If they denied everything and balked at the settlement offers, Rothstein would confront them with whatever indisputable evidence his team had dug up.

For example, an unnamed source told Bob Norman that Scott explained to investors that he could press a button on his desk to reveal a giant TV behind the painting in his office.

Quote, Rothstein said he would turn on a video of the guy fucking his mistress and then he would say, we can either settle this now or I can depose your wife, your mistress, your daughter, and your son about it.

Usually, that's all it took for them to sign on the dotted line.

It may sound like extortion, but according to the lawyer who originated and pitched the idea, it was completely legal.

And if it weren't, do you think the accused would have sued?

The whole point was secrecy and confidentiality.

It would cost them the same amount of money, either way.

Confidentiality.

is also the reason Rothstein couldn't share with potential investors the identities of the defendants.

Oh come on, Scott, not even one.

Okay, fine.

Have you heard of this billionaire guy, Jeffrey Epstein?

A real creep, apparently.

There were about $50 million in civil lawsuits pending against him in 2008, with more to come.

An RRA is representing a bunch of the plaintiffs, Rothstein said.

Epstein will likely settle out of court, but we'll want to pay monthly for tax purposes or whatever.

That's where you, the investors, come in.

We'll pull the funds to pay the lump sums to the plaintiffs and to distribute the larger settlement amounts as they are received.

We're talking about astounding returns ranging from 70 to 400 percent annualized, even after the law firm withholds its fee.

In fact, many of the settlements in the other cases had already been negotiated, and the funds are sitting safely in escrow at TD Bank, Rothstein assured.

Here are the documents to prove it.

See that?

Nine zeros.

Literally risk-free.

There's not another financial product on the market like this one.

Need more proof?

Here are lock letters signed by TD Bank Regional Vice President Frank Spinoza certifying that the accounts are legitimate.

Still not convinced?

Fine.

Rosteem would log into the TD Bank website right there in his office so the potential investors could see the balances with their own eyes.

Want to talk to a TD Bank executive yourself?

Here you go.

Ricardo Mejia, live and in the flesh.

Or here's a list of lawyers who have referred cases to RRA.

Give one of them a call.

Need more incentive?

Here's the key to the condo across the street.

Knock yourself out.

Scott Rothstein's offer sounded promising in theory, but as you might have suspected, none of it was true.

There were no pending or pre-negotiated settlements.

The bank statements from TD Bank, displaying balances over a billion dollars, were fabricated.

The lock letters from VP Frank Spinoza were real in the sense that they existed, but he had been bribed 50 grand to sign them.

The referring lawyers also had their palms and probably other parts of their bodies greased.

What about the TD Bank website, a doctor duplicate created and housed internally by Rothstein's IT staff?

What about TD Bank executive Ricardo Mejia?

A real person, no doubt, portrayed magnificently.

by Stephen Caputi, Rothstein's nightclub business partner.

Scott Rothstein had built a highly orchestrated fraud scheme.

He was simply paying promised returns with new money he raised, one of the oldest scams in the book.

But this version was so convincing, it fooled even the most sophisticated investors, such as Doug Von Allman, Rothstein's neighbor, and an immensely wealthy venture capitalist who served as the namesake for the University of Kentucky's School of Accountancy.

Von Allman and family invested as much as $100 million with Rothstein through his friend George Levine's hedge fund.

Levine created the Banyan Investors Fund to exclusively invest in Rothstein's secret settlements, and as the largest contributor to the scheme, he recruited other hedge funds and investors to join.

Levine even dumped $120 million of his own money into the pre-settlement funds and reinvested the returns.

Clearly, George Levine never suspected that Rothstein's operation was a sham, or so he says.

at least not initially, which was surprising, considering Levine's own shady past, which included pleading guilty to defrauding customers of his car kit business and pursuing a meritless lawsuit against a cancer-stricken consumer advocate until they died and then continued attacking their estate.

But in those early days, there was no reason to be suspicious of Scott Rothstein's operation.

Every investor payment was made on time.

New investments were constantly coming in.

You can sense the glee and excitement in Scott's emails from this time period.

I feel like I just took six Viagra, he wrote to his best friend Ted Morse in a 2006 email titled, Mo Money.

In another email with a subject line, my favorite subject after pussy, Rothstein pitches a deal that would return 20% interest after only 10 weeks, and then he signed off with, Love Ya, Me.

Like most things involving Scott Rothstein, Those email signatures gradually morphed into something cringe-inducing.

He started referring to himself as Law Dog or the Happy Banker or the punk with a bad reputation.

Love ya, Scott Rothstein, H-M-F-I-C, which meant head motherfucker in charge.

Other times he wrote Scott, T-P-O-F-T, which stood for the Prince of Fucking Darkness.

Yet, despite his self-anointed title, not even Scott Rothstein knew how dark his world would ultimately become.

In early 2009, people people around Scott Rothstein noticed that his trademark twitch had gotten much more pronounced.

His ADHD had worsened to the point where he couldn't finish a sentence, much less a cigar.

His mind was always drifting.

It was like there was something he wanted to express, but couldn't find the right words to say.

In February, one family of investors somehow obtained a banking report that revealed that Rothstein-Rosenfeld-Adler law firms' trust accounts contained significantly less money than Rothstein Rothstein had claimed.

Their attorney sent a letter to Scott requesting the immediate withdrawal of their entire $4 million investment.

Holy shit, this is going to explode, Rothstein remembered thinking after receiving the demand.

We're all going to jail.

He returned that family's investment instantly and had them sign a confidentiality agreement to avoid reading about himself in the news.

Rothstein had successfully bought himself more time, but he could feel the walls closing in.

In addition to the close call, he was struggling to find enough new investors to keep up with the disbursements owed to existing investors.

The familiar, fatal blow delivered to every Ponzi scheme eventually.

If nothing changed, in a few months, Scott would be missing payments, which could lead to the whole thing collapsing.

So, Scott says he managed the stress by doing the same thing that landed him in this predicament to begin with.

He spent lavishly.

I never even tried to stop the bleeding, he said.

I kept spending like it was really my money.

More expensive cars, boats, offices, jewelry, increasing the firm's payroll to ridiculous, unsustainable levels.

All the trappings of wealth.

I gave money to everyone.

Family, friends, charities.

It was just temporary euphoria.

In three years, it's estimated that Scott Rothstein spent as much as $500 million on what he's referred to as his rock and roll lifestyle.

At the same time, his law firm was billing $8 million a year.

Who did he think he was kidding?

Himself, apparently.

Quote, I convinced myself that my exit strategy would work.

It was my only hope.

Don't laugh.

Scott Rothstein's exit strategy was his other business ventures.

You know, the vodka, the tech company, the restaurant, the nightclub.

Scott says he had every intention of repaying the money he was stealing.

He just needed one of those businesses to take off, that's all.

However, as time passed, that seemed increasingly unlikely to happen.

Eventually, he was forced to acknowledge those other ventures for what they truly were, additional sinking ships.

From that point on, Scott Rothstein spent every waking moment trying to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat.

When he started sending partial payments to investors in April 2009, he asked a lawyer at his firm, Christina Kitterman, to pose as a Florida bar official.

to falsely inform investors that he was under investigation.

That's why the trust accounts had been temporarily frozen, she told them, and additional complaints would only prolong the delay.

In addition to granting himself more leeway, Rothstein also raised additional funds by ripping off his best friend's parents.

Ed Morse, founder of one of the largest family-owned automotive dealer groups in the country, hired Scott to represent the family in a $2 million dispute with an interior designer over a botched job.

Scott told Morse that he had won the case, plus an additional $21 million in punitive damages.

The The only problem, Rothstein told Morse, was that the interior designer had stashed all their cash in the Cayman Islands, and to seize it, the authorities needed a bond for two and a half times the judgment, which amounted to approximately $57 million.

Rothstein provided a court order signed by two federal judges as proof, and Morse promptly paid.

In reality, Ed Morse had not been awarded $23 million.

In fact, he had lost the lawsuit and actually owed the interior designer $800,000 as a result.

Scott had forged the judge's signatures.

At the same time, George Levine's Banion Income Group had become privy to the fact that Rothstein's pre-funded settlement scheme was a scam.

Some suggest they knew the whole time.

Surely, Banion contacted the authorities at the first sign of trouble, right?

Wrong.

On paper, George Levine had generated $850 million from Rothstein's investments.

He wasn't about to watch it go up in flames.

So the Banyan group recruited hundreds of millions of dollars in new investor money to prop up the scheme long enough for Levine to hopefully withdraw his funds without losing them.

Luckily, they found another whale and Barry Beckenham at Ballamore Capital Management.

Here's Beckenham bragging about the $100 million investment his group made at a financial conference for trustees of public employee pension funds.

What we've done recently is we found an area of legal settlement, for example, that we recently funded with $100 million.

Believe it or not, we negotiated the first $100 million of outside money to go in.

We're getting a 15% current cash return.

Unfortunately, these new influxes of cash were akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as the saying goes.

George Levine sounded the alarm in an email to Scott Rostine on October 30th, 2009.

after the law dog missed another payment.

If we don't make Doug von Almond's payment tomorrow, I'm afraid the game will be over.

Little did George Levine know that the game had ended days ago.

A new financial scandal is brewing in Broward County, this time involving a prominent and well-connected attorney, Scott Rothstein, is at the center of a federal investigation and the other partners in the law firm are now scrambling to figure out if they got tricked in the latest high-profile Ponzi scheme.

Today's news is sending shockwaves through Broward County.

Rothstein was a major political fundraiser for Governor Charlie Charlie Crist, John McCain, and Democrat Alex Sink.

He also hired disgraced Broward Sheriff Ken Jenny to work at the law firm when Jenny got out of prison.

But now it's Rothstein who's under scrutiny, with some reports saying he's fled the country.

Right now, all we know is that the money's gone, Scott's gone, and we're trying to find out what happened.

It's too early to tell precisely what kind of scheme it was.

A week earlier, Scott Rothstein was sitting fully clothed in a shower in his mansion with the 357 Magnum pressed against his temple.

I sat there for well over an hour, telling myself repeatedly to just pull the trigger and end the pain.

Everyone would be better off, Scott said.

Obviously, Scott didn't go through with it since he lived to tell the tale.

Instead, he reverted to his original plan.

A week before his suicidal contemplations, Scott sent an email to every attorney at Rothsdeen Rosenfeld Adler.

asking about U.S.

and Israel extradition laws for a mysterious client who had committed fraud.

This client is related to a very powerful client of ours, and so time is of the essence, Scott noted.

Let's rock and roll.

The general consensus from his staff was that relocating to Morocco would be the safest option for said client.

On October 27th, 2009, Scott Rothstein was on a chartered flight headed to Casablanca, Morocco.

Before George Levine or anyone else realized the jig was up.

He had been escorted to the airport by David Benjamin, a lieutenant and top aide to Broward County Sheriff Alam Bertie.

Scott brought with him a duffel bag of cash, his million-dollar watch collection, and his uncle Bill.

It also wired about $16 million to a bank account belonging to Anique Khalid, a restaurant manager who had volunteered to serve as a tour guide of Morocco with the understanding that Rostein wanted to invest money in his native country.

Khalid wasn't wise to Rostine's budding legal troubles.

Upon arrival in Casablanca, Scott Rothstein

Regency, where he once again considered taking his own life.

He says he was in a sheer state of panic and lined up bottles of Xanax and blood pressure pills which he planned to wash down with vodka.

Back in Florida, the realization of what was happening started to set in.

A group of Rothstein investors scheduled a meeting.

All the big names were there.

Ed Morse, Ted Morse, Becketh, Preve, Levine.

They calculated that Rothstein more than $500 million.

million.

At that meeting, it was decided that they should contact the authorities.

George Levine, perhaps, in an attempt to save his own ass, called federal prosecutors to let them know about Scott Rothstein's, quote, suspicious activity.

On October 31, 2009, Scott Rosstein, still breathing for now, finally reached out to his law partners.

Sorry for letting you all down, he texted.

I am a fool.

I thought I could fix it, but got trapped by my ego and refused refused to fail.

And now all I have accomplished is hurting the people I love.

Please take care of yourselves, and please protect Kimmy.

She knew nothing.

Neither did she nor any of you deserve what I did.

I hope God allows me to see you on the other side.

Love, Scott.

Nobody knew where Scott was, not even Kilm.

He told his partner Stuart Rosenfeld that he was leaving the office to attend a family emergency.

Stu, who claimed to be completely unaware of the Ponzi scheme, had little information to offer the angry investors who were calling and showing up at the law office demanding their money.

The law firm had no money to give.

Rothstein had bled them dry as well, leaving only $117,000 in the operating account, not even enough to cover the week's payroll.

RRA attorneys resigned en masse in the following days.

Others agreed to waive their salaries until the terms of the inevitable bankruptcy were hammered out.

I'm just very sad to see a beautiful thing we built fall apart, Stuart Rosenfeld said.

When did you realize that it was starting to fall apart?

Friday afternoon.

Can you tell me how you came to realize this?

When certain people who I knew to be friends of Scott called me and told me that he had stolen money from them.

How much money are we talking about is missing?

I have no clue, but they've represented to me it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Scott was like a brother to me.

That's really all I can say, and I'm shocked and dismayed to find out what I've learned in the last few days.

On November 2nd, 2009, the law offices of Rothstein-Rosenfeld-Adler hired attorney Ken Coffey to file suit against Scott Rothstein and dissolve the firm.

The complaint reads, It is with surprise and sorrow that the attorneys of Rothstein-Rosenfeld-Adler PA have learned that Scott W.

Rothstein, the managing partner and CEO of the firm, has, according to assertions of certain investors, allegedly orchestrated a substantial misappropriation of funds from investor trust accounts that made use of the law firm's name.

And the worst part about it, Scott Rothstein was going to get away with it.

He was in Morocco with access to tens of millions of dollars and no path to extradition.

Scott could spend the rest of his days basking in the sun on the beaches of Agadir without a care in the world.

Why wouldn't he?

But then, a surprise twist.

A chartered chartered jet traveling from Casablanca landed at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport at 12.50 p.m.

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009.

After about a week on the lamb, Scott Rothstein had returned to face the music.

I went away for the purpose of making sure that I had my head on straight, that when I came back, I had already been through all the emotional things, had been through the hysterics, had been through all the other things that you go through when you realize that you have done something that you shouldn't have done.

I will not stop until every single penny is paid back.

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This fraud scheme is arguably the largest fraud in Miami history.

We're talking in excess of $1 billion.

We believe Mr.

Rosting lied to investors for years about their rate of return, the safety of their investments, and what they were investing in.

Evidence will show that Mr.

Rosting swindled his own friends and clients.

That is unconscionable.

And he allegedly did this by forging signatures of federal judges.

That is bold.

But this investigation is far from over.

We will continue to unravel the weave of schemes and dismantle the House of Cards, which he has built.

It took the FBI and the IRS weeks to unravel Scott Rothstein's Ponzi scheme.

They found that the tentacles of his operation extended to nearly 100 different businesses, involved hundreds of investors, and accounted for more than $1 billion.

Federal authorities started seizing Rothstein's assets before he had even returned from Morocco.

27 cars and boats, millions of dollars worth of jewelry, and dozens of properties, including the house Scott had purchased for his now 16-year-old estranged daughter.

However, the sale of Rothstein's assets would only satisfy a fraction of the amount needed to be recouped.

Yeah, there were red flags.

There were more than red flags.

There were...

there were bombs going on.

The civil lawsuits followed, the largest of which was filed by Fort Lauderdale attorney Bill Scherer, who represented some of the most significant investors, including Doug von Allman.

Scott Rothstein Rothstein was not the only defendant named.

Scherer was pursuing every person and entity that had touched the scheme, including George Levine, Frank Preve, Deborah Viegas, and especially TD Bank, which maintained accounts for Rothstein's investment business and failed to alert the government about suspicious activities.

I filed a lawsuit against TD Bank and Scott Rothstein

and TD Bank officials as co-conspirators in the biggest palms scheme ever to hit.

Raleigh County and probably South Florida.

How much is your lawsuit with?

My lawsuit is for

$100 million on behalf of my

clients, probably another $400 million on behalf of others,

plus punitive damages for allowing this to happen.

As much as $500 million was missing, yet sympathy was hard to come by.

Many of Scott Rostein's victims were billionaires and millionaires, greedily greedily chasing an extra percentage of profit by investing in sexual assault settlements.

All I can say is it's a damn shame, Doug Von Allman said about his misfortune.

Fortunately, Doug's $100 million loss only slightly delayed the construction of his $40 million super yacht.

True story.

I would suggest saving your compassion for the Ponzi scheme's true victims.

Welcome back, everybody.

Billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein says he is a victim of Scott Rothstein's investment scam.

His lawyers say Rothstein filed several civil suits against Epstein on behalf of women he was convicted of assaulting.

Rothstein in turn told his investors that Epstein settled for $200 million and that they'd be getting a piece of the settlement.

But Epstein's lawyers say no deal was ever made.

Wipe those tears away, Jeffrey.

Oh, it's massage oil?

Whatever.

Doesn't matter.

You heard what Scott said when he got off the plane.

He was going to make everybody whole again.

Rothstein even requested his own disbarment to prove he was ready to accept his fate.

However, not many were buying his acts of contrition.

This is Bill Scherer again.

I think he's trying to work off a life sentence.

I think he's not doing it for anybody but himself.

I think it's a big show that he took that money and went to Morocco to come back and be on his white horse and make it good.

That was one theory as to why Scott Rossine flew back to the U.S.

on his own accord.

Another more widely accepted presumption is that Scott was involved with organized crime, and maybe someone threatened his life or his family's life until he returned to American soil.

Maybe that's why he transferred more than $2 million to the Levy family while in Morocco, a family that had deep ties to the Israeli mafia.

Why else would he have prioritized repaying them over everyone else?

Also, there was another story from Rothstein's time in Morocco that contradicts his supposed moral awakening.

One of his bodyguards, Bob Scandifio, told journalist Bob Norman that he traveled to see Scott in Casablanca and received a modest proposal.

50-year-old Scandifio had recently been diagnosed with leukemia, and Scott knew this.

So Scott suggested Bob take the fall for organizing the scheme, which would minimize Scott's time in prison.

Why?

Because, Bob, you're about to die anyway, and I, Scott Rothstein, have so much more to live for.

Rothstein offered to deposit $250,000 into a trust account for Scandifil's soon-to-be fatherless daughter if he accepted.

But after thinking about it for about two seconds, the former bodyguard decided not to spend the final years of his life in prison.

So in the end, Scott Rothstein was left with no choice but to accept responsibility for his own creation.

And many of those who benefited from his scheme, even unwittingly, would have to deal with the fallout.

For instance, the 30 charities to which Rothstein heavily donated were asked to return the contributions or face lawsuits.

Many of those non-profits reportedly had to lay off employees or cut services to comply.

And let's not forget about all the politicians Scott bankrolled, most of whom would play victim after sheepishly returning the money.

He never asked me for anything, Governor Charlie Christ stated adamantly.

after suspending Rothstein from the judicial nominating commission to which he had appointed him.

He wanted good government.

That's what he told me.

I'm no better a judge of character than Dan Marino.

Predictably, Charlie Crist's connection to Scott Rostein became a lightning rod during the 2014 Florida gubernatorial campaign.

Rostein boasted about contributing huge sums of money to the campaign of then Governor Charlie Crist and the influence it gave him over judicial appointments.

Charlie swindled Florida, swindled his own supporters, swindled voters with promises made and promises broken.

That's true, and we won't let Charlie Crist swindle us again.

That's right.

The people of Florida were fed up with these swindlers.

That's why they elected Rick Scott instead, the man whose company paid a $1.7 billion fine for conducting the largest Medicare fraud in U.S.

history.

Oh well, I'm sure things have vastly improved in the Sunshine State since then.

Wait a second.

I'm sorry I must have got distracted by all the other immediate consequences, but did I miss something?

Why hasn't Scott Rothstein been arrested?

I know one of the questions you guys have is why he hasn't been arrested.

You know, we want a successful prosecution, so we are not going to rush this investigation.

You would think that someone accused of orchestrating a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme would have been greeted on the tarmac with federally issued guns in his face.

Not the case, apparently.

Scott Rothstein had been back in the States for almost a month and hadn't been charged with a single crime.

That said, he didn't go home either.

Scott hadn't even called his wife.

While the public wondered if Rostein had been allowed to flee again, the truth was that the FBI had him under their control.

Scott was secretly cooperating with the feds to help build an international organized crime case involving a security company and a wine merchant who had connections to the Sicilian mob.

Rostein had previously worked with these individuals, and despite his name being all over the news, Scott was able to arrange a meeting with those individuals to discuss the destruction of documents related to his Ponzi scheme.

Of course, when that meeting took place, Scott was wearing a wire.

This is Scott Rothstein, November 16th, Monday, 1.43 p.m.

That international undercover investigation resulted in 26 arrests in total, spanning from Miami to New York to Italy.

Scott Rothstein was happy to help, anything to garner some leniency, which he would soon need.

We're here today to announce the filing of a five-count criminal information against former Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein.

This case is a glaring example of greed-run amok, of someone who gave up all principles in exchange for a lifestyle he could not afford.

Attorneys like elected officials hold a special position of trust in our society and owe a duty to deal honestly with their clients and to promote their clients' best interests.

This attorney breached that duty by defrauding clients and investors of approximately $1.2 billion.

Rothstein spent outrageous sums on real estate, cars, yachts, jewelry, politics, and philanthropy, all to create the illusion that he, the law firm, and these schemes to defraud were hugely successful.

Now the mansions, the Ferraris, the yachts, the law firm, and his friends are all gone.

He sought to buy power and influence at the expense of his clients and instead has potentially bought himself a lengthy prison sentence.

Scott Walter Rothstein was arrested on December 1st, 2009 and charged with five federal counts, including racketeering, wire fraud, and conspiracy.

Federal agents picked up the 47-year-old former lawyer.

at an undisclosed hotel and transported him to the FBI office in North Miami Beach, where he was denied bail.

Scott pleaded guilty on January 27th, 2010.

After seeing her husband for the first time in months, Kilm Rothstein, who had been implicated in the Court of Public Opinion, addressed the media outside the courthouse with two attorneys, a friend, and a bodyguard nicknamed Meadie standing by her side.

Today is the saddest day of my life.

Two years ago when I married the sweetest man I'd ever met, I never would have believed our future together would come to this.

While I have committed no crime, the Court of Public Opinion has chosen to believe otherwise.

That is why I want to take this opportunity to state unequivocally that the public slurs and accusations against me are unjustified and based neither on evidence or facts.

Kim said she had been isolated and wrongfully maligned, and repeatedly denied that she had anything to do with her husband's crimes.

Then she climbed into a Cadillac escalate and drove away, but not before her bodyguard and a TV reporter got into a physical skirmish.

Tempers flare.

It's a wrestling match of sorts outside a Florida courtroom.

It started with a forearm from Kim Rothstein's bodyguard, but then the reporter pushes back as the conflict disintegrates into a full takedown.

Scott Rothstein had just pleaded guilty in federal court to bilking $1.2 billion from clients.

With Rothstein facing decades behind bars if convicted, potential victims are now focused on recouping any losses.

Here's the least surprising part of this story.

There were no permanent losses, just temporary inconveniences.

The wealthy people who lost money in Rothstein's Ponzi scheme recouped every penny.

Through government forfeiture efforts as well as bankruptcy and civil actions, between $400 and $500 million was recovered.

TD Bank alone settled for hundreds of millions of dollars plus fines.

Rothine's former law partners were ordered to return a combined 18 million.

Their former accounting firm was liable for 10 million.

Organizations such as FedEx, the Miami Heat, and the Florida Panthers refunded tens of thousands.

And the auction of Rothstein's assets fetched tens of millions more.

Bidders will have the opportunity to bid on the contents of the former law offices of Ross Dein, Rosenfeld, and Adler.

Here's your opportunity to own a piece of South Florida history.

There was also a $1.1 million personal property lien filed against Kim Rothstein by the bankruptcy trustee for the shopping sprees, plastic surgeries, vacations, and spa treatments financed by her husband's scheme.

She reportedly purchased $5,000 worth of shoes during the week Scott had fled to Morocco.

Like the innocent woman she proclaimed to be, Kim turned over everything that wasn't bolted on.

Well, almost everything.

The wife of Hansi schemer Scott Rothstein was back in federal court today where she pled guilty to hiding more than $1 million in jewels from the Fed.

Now divorced, Kim Wendell would eventually plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering after hiding and selling a 12-carat diamond ring.

She was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Not a bad deal considering how big a book had been thrown at her ex-husband.

Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein is getting an unwelcome early birthday gift.

Today, a day before he turns 48, Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in prison for defrauding clients out of $1.2 billion.

Federal prosecutors said Rothstein deserves some leniency for cooperating with investigators, asking for a sentence of 40 years.

But today, an interesting twist, the federal judge imposed a harsher sentence.

On June 9th, 2010, U.S.

District Judge James Cohn sentenced Scott Rothstein to 50 years in prison.

This Ponzi scheme was not the result of a poor business decision.

Quite the contrary, it was fraud at its inception, Cohn said.

The judge was especially pissed about Rostein forging the signatures of federal and state judges.

There can be no conduct more reviled, he proclaimed, as he served Rossine with a sentence greater than what prosecutors had even asked for.

Due to his cooperation, which ultimately proved worthless for him, Scott Rosstein was placed in the witness protection program.

He was taken to an undisclosed location and booked under an undisclosed name.

A year and a half half later, Scott was given one last opportunity to reduce his sentence.

It would require him to spill the beans on everybody, something that he had no qualms about doing.

Rothstein will be deposed by at least 30 lawyers involved in several civil suits stemming from his billion-dollar fraud scheme.

Beginning in December 2011, Scott Rothstein spent hundreds of hours detailing every aspect and person involved in his crimes.

He implicated dozens of former attorneys, acquaintances, and accomplices.

He described how he had the banks in his pocket, how Governor Christ appointed him to the JNC as part of a quid pro quo.

We had more than enough money to fuel our lifestyle, Scott admitted.

It was the power that got a hold of us and kept pulling this forward.

The more power, the more money.

The more money, the more power.

It kept going back and forth until it exploded.

What reward did Scott Rothstein receive for his extremely detailed testimony?

Again, nothing.

Federal prosecutors determined that he provided false information, which violated the terms of his plea agreement.

The lies, he told, reportedly concerned the jewelry that Kilm hid, which ultimately led to her conviction.

Scott Rothstein will serve the remainder of his sentence behind bars.

He is scheduled for release in 2060.

If Scott lives long enough to see that day, he'll be 97 years old.

In his depositions, Rothstein shared enough information to secure more than two dozen additional convictions, including those of lawyers such as Christina Kitterman, who received a five-year sentence.

The law firm's IT guys received three years.

Frank Spinosa, the TD Bank executive, was sentenced to two and a half years.

Frank Preve, the 68-year-old money manager of the Banyan Income Fund, received a sentence of three and a half years.

Preeve's boss, George Levine, the largest feeder of the scheme, was not charged criminally, but was found guilty in the SEC's civil lawsuit, which stripped him of hundreds of millions of ill-gotten gains.

Rothstein's partners, Stuart Rosenfeld and Russ Adler, were not charged in relation to the Ponzi scheme.

However, they both pleaded guilty, as did several others, to making illegal campaign contributions, with Rosenfeld receiving the stiffer sentence of the two.

Former Scott Rothstein partner Stuart Rosenfeld was sentenced today to 33 months in prison for his role in the $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme.

I'll be spending the rest of my life trying to redeem myself.

Thank you.

The rest of his life, so about seven years.

Stuart Rosenfeld passed away in 2021 at the age of 66 from unknown causes.

Maybe it was guilt that ate away at him because he wasn't as innocent as he was once perceived.

Apparently, old Stu paid $185,000 to a few of Scott's cop buddies to harass and intimidate an escort and her boyfriend who had threatened to expose them.

One of those cops, David Benjamin, was Rothstein's de facto head of security who handled a lot of the dirty work.

Man heading to prison for five years after he was sentenced today for the role in the Scott Rothstein-Ponzi scheme.

David Benjamin was a Broward County lieutenant when court documents indicated that Benjamin was paid thousands of dollars for assisting Rothstein in a lot of ways, including having another lawyer's ex-wife arrested falsely to gain advantage in a child custody fight.

One of the first co-conspirators to be charged and convicted was Rothstein's loyal COO, 44-year-old Deborah Viegas.

She pleaded guilty to money laundering charges but claimed she didn't even know what a Ponzi scheme was.

Scott had been incredibly generous to Deborah and her family even before he had anything.

She trusted him and just did what she was told, she said.

Looking back in retrospect, probably Mr.

Rossine was trying to engender loyalty from me.

I don't really know.

I'd like to believe that he loved me and cared for me and was doing these things for me and the children to help us because he knew we had nobody else to depend on.

Especially now, Deborah's irreplaceable best friend had been murdered.

The children's father remained in custody.

Viegas testified that her kids would, quote, literally not survive if she were sentenced to prison.

Where was this concern for your children when you were involved in this criminal activity?

The judge asked.

I thought it was a one-time thing, Deborah said.

Then the murder came, and my head wasn't where it should have been.

I was just thinking about getting home to take care of my children.

It was a huge, grave mistake.

Referred to in court as a loyal soldier of Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, Deborah Viegas today received a 10-year prison sentence for her role in Rothstein's massive investment fraud.

She pleaded guilty in June to money laundering conspiracy.

Villegas will remain free for another eight months so she can continue cooperating in the ongoing investigation.

Because of her cooperation, Deborah Viegas' 10-year sentence was reduced to four years.

She was released on December 18th, 2014, just in time to testify in her ex-husband's murder trial, which finally began more than six years after his arrest on June 20th, 2016.

Trial is underway for a man accused of murdering one of his wife's closest friends, and this case has very close ties to a local law firm embroiled in scandal.

After the Rothstein-Ponzi scheme collapsed, defense lawyers for Tony Viegas conducted a parallel investigation into how Melissa Lewis's Lewis's employment may be related to her murder.

There were more than enough coincidences to spark conspiracy.

For starters, Scott Rossine served as the counsel for Plantation PD's fraternal order of police, which meant he represented them personally.

Soon after Tony Viegas' arrest, Officer Joseph Allu Jr., better known as Meatie, retired from Plantation PD and went to work for Rosstein as a bodyguard.

Howard Scheinberg, the lead prosecutor in the case against Tony, quit and joined Rothstein's law firm as well.

Another unusual detail that raised eyebrows is that Melissa Lewis and Deborah Viegas shared a therapist who refused to be deposed about the case, and that therapist's husband ended up representing one of the RRA lawyers who was arrested for playing a significant role in Rosstein's fraud scheme.

Rossine was somewhat tied into organized crime.

Rossstein was involved in a Ponzi scheme making tons and tons of money.

And perhaps there are certain people from the Rothstein firm who found out about this and that was not good for the firm.

Tony's attorney Bruce Fleischer posed to CBS News.

Fleischer also pointed out how weird it was that the plantation police have produced the forensic testing results so quickly.

Normally it takes months, sometimes up to a year to develop that DNA discovery that's turned over to the defense.

In this case, they had the DNA within one week of the crime.

That tells you that someone exerted their influence in getting this pushed to the front burner.

Furthermore, Scott Rothstein, who by his own admission had hosted Tony Viegas at his house up to 100 times, was the one who offered a $250,000 reward for information.

When Tony's roommate, Will Cette Pasquale, attempted to claim that reward after providing the pepper spray evidence to police, Rothstein never paid.

Some suggested it was all for show, as if he already knew who would be arrested and how the case would be closed.

What did all of this mean?

Reasonable doubt, maybe?

Deborah Viegas didn't think so.

Was Melissa aware of anything that Scott was involved with?

I'm going to use the term the Ponzi scheme.

Or any discussion between you and Scott about having Melissa killed?

Absolutely not.

Are you aware of any discussion or conspiracy to hire Tony for Melissa Moose's murder?

No.

Deborah admitted that Melissa had an inappropriate relationship with Scott when she was a student at Nova, but flatly denied speculation that her best friend's murder was a subplot to her boss's fraud scheme.

But ultimately, that would be for a jury to decide or not.

The Rossing connections were disallowed at Tony Villegas' trial, and after two hours of deliberation, a jury found Tony guilty of first-degree murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors say Villegas was jealous of Lewis's relationship with his ex-wife, Deborah, and killed her because of it.

The jury believed and convicted Viegas of first-degree murder.

We could win an appeal.

He could get a new trial, then it would be up to a new jury to determine whether or not there was that Rothstein influence or effect on this case.

There were questions about Scott Rothstein's influence on the other tragedies as well.

On January 16th, 2010, the lifeless body of a 26-year-old law student named Julie Timmerman was found in her apartment next to several bottles of pills and a note.

Julie worked as a law clerk for Scott Rothstein.

She used to be a hostess at his restaurant when Scott offered to rent her a downtown apartment and pay her way through law school.

Friends say Julie never slept with Scott.

In his deposition, Scott said he did.

When his scheme collapsed, Timmerman was listed in the bankruptcy records as having received $60,000 of the dirty money.

Yet police and friends deny that Julie's suicide had anything to do with Scott.

They claimed it was a family matter.

Julie's note, which ended with a message to her father, seems to support that.

Quote, I hope Joe Timmerman burns in hell.

Eight months later, Bob Scandifield shot himself.

Bob was the bodyguard with leukemia, whom Rothine tried to convince to share his burden.

Bob could reportedly no longer work in a physical manner after recovering from his condition.

He must have felt like he had no other options.

Apparently, Mark Levinson, a jeweler who did nearly $10 million in business with the Rothines, struggled with similar demons.

A jeweler well known across South Florida is being mourned tonight.

Mark Levinson of Levinson Jewelers died this morning.

The medical examiner says he committed suicide.

In recent years, Levinson's name has been linked to convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein.

The 60-year-old took his own life with a single gunshot on February 24th, 2015.

His body was found in the yard of an abandoned house near his family home.

Mark Levinson was never charged with a crime in relation to the Rothstein scheme, but was required to return $650,000 of stolen funds that had been used to purchase jewelry.

So far, Levinson was the fourth person in Scott Rothstein's circle to have met an untimely end.

And while Scott isn't directly responsible for these people's deaths, it's impossible to deny the effect he had on all of their lives.

How would their stories have unfolded if they'd never met this man?

The prince of fucking darkness, indeed.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka DeFormer, aka a Jim IFC.

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Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.