Now that Arthur “Duke” Sorey has finally, and spectacularly, been fired with cause as the most corrupt city Manager in the history of North Miami Beach, bar none, the City is finally complying with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and public records requests are finally being fulfilled.

Little by little we have been uncovering layer upon layer of the malfeasance, fiscal mismanagement, and unscrupulousness perpetrated by the unprofessional, uncouth, unpolished, and undignified City Manager who was hired by some of the most corrupt elected officials ever to sit on the dais at City Hall.

As we’ve mentioned time and time again, this shameful two-year state of emergency that took place in North Miami Beach history was the end result of voter apathy combined with the infiltration of the very same organized crime ring that has been running the neighboring City of North Miami since 2009 when Andre Pierre first became that City’s Mayor.

Andre sought to expand his criminal empire and gain a foothold in North Miami Beach by ensuring a four-vote majority on the Commission in order to push his malignant agenda through.  The calamitous election of Daniela Jean in 2020 was the nail in the coffin, when she became that fourth vote enabling Andre to claim victory and begin draining the City’s resources to enrich himself and his cronies.  It was the proverbial perfect storm.

As we all know, this malevolent circle of corruption was broken on November 22, 2022 when the now-former Criminal Commissioner Paule Villard was ousted from her seat by Jay Chernoff, and the purging of bad actors at City Hall began.

It took a lawsuit and four months to accomplish, but the first rat to scurry from the wreckage was the inept ex-City “Attorney” Hans Ottinot, who resigned when he finally accepted that his manipulative scheme to keep collecting an undeserved $60,000.00 a month paycheck had hit a brick wall.  We’d love to tell you that he resigned in shame, but Hans Ottinot is a shameless shyster without a conscience or a shred of decency.

The next varmint to be driven out was none other than the classless, immoral thug himself, Duke Sorey, whose dishonorable legacy of nepotism, profiteering, and repugnant demeanor will forever be memorialized in the North Miami Beach Hall of Shame.

It wasn’t enough for Duke to steal as much money from North Miami Beach taxpayers as he possibly could by way of Purchasing Card (P Card) fraud, he also felt entitled to misappropriate and pilfer your federal tax dollars, which were granted to the City by way of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA).  According to the White House website, one of the purposes of this Act was to support communities by distributing “more than $360 billion in emergency funding for state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments to ensure that they are in a position to keep front line public workers on the job and paid, while also effectively distributing the vaccine, scaling testing, reopening schools, and maintaining other vital services.”

According to the database of the Florida Office of Emergency Management, the City of North Miami Beach received a total of $21,557,242, half of which was distributed October 1, 2021 for Fiscal Year 2021-2022, with the balance being distributed for Fiscal Year 2022-23.

At the September 21, 2021 City Commission meeting, which was still being held virtually via Zoom, Duke Sorey initially placed a proposed Resolution No. R2021-96 regarding the ARPA funds, a copy of which was deliberately omitted from the online Agenda so North Miami Beach residents wouldn’t be able to review it in advance.

In fact, not even the Mayor and Commissioners received any information about the receipt and distribution of ARPA funds until the morning of the September 21st Commission meeting, as evidenced by an email from Andrea Henry, Duke’s then-Assistant to the City Manager.

Since the Agenda legislation, including the ARPA matter, was unable to be completed on September 21st, the meeting was continued to September 23, 2021, when the Resolution was, once again, not attached to the Agenda.

Ironically, this was the very same meeting that the four Criminal Commissioners, Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean, together with the Satanic Trio of Duke Sorey, his Assistant City Manager Gedel “Beelzebub” Merzius, and ex-City “Attorney” Hans Ottinot, attempted to overthrow the government by staging a coup against the Mayor by cutting off his microphone and refusing to allow him to lead as the Chair of the meeting.

Proving yet again, that the animosity toward Tony DeFillipo by the organized criminal ring that’s been holding the City hostage for the past two years did not start with their bogus non-residency accusations.

Welp, that didn’t age well.

But, we digress.

One of the reasons Duke didn’t want you — the residents of north Miami Beach — to see this Resolution prior to it being voted on is because of how he planned to spend the money.

Besides, he didn’t need your approval since he already knew he had a four criminal majority vote on the dais to let him do whatever he wanted.  The only surprise is that he didn’t put it on the Consent Agenda and do away with all discussion on the dais altogether.

Right off the bat, Exhibit A attached to the Resolution started with a $200,000 allocation to “Grocery Gift Card Program,” under the guise of “Economic Stabilization,” but was actually categorized as the “Paule Villard Re-election Campaign Fund.”  With that money, Duke purchased one thousand $200 gift cards.

On December 11, 2021 Paule gave away 851 Publix gift cards to her future voters, delivered 5 cards to the homebound (one of which was outside city limits), and handed out another 118 cards to only 41 individuals like candy on Halloween, violating the “one card per household” rule, to her December 19, 2021 soccer event.

Oddly, according to her flyer for the soccer event, only 100 gift cards were to be given out to the children of your future voters, yet she magically produced another 18 to buy votes with.

Funny how that works.

Then again, criminal minds think alike.

According to Exhibit A to the Resolution, other questionable items slated for ARPA funding were the following:

• $70,000 for “Assessments and Studies” on”climatalogical impact,” “renewable energy,” “parking,” and “water conservation.”  Is there proof that any of this has been done?
• $100,000 for “Senior Bus” so Paule could transport her future voters to and from her taxpayer-funded campaign headquarters, a/k/a the Senior Center.
• $500,000 for “Technology Improvements.”  And the City’s website still sucks.
• $400,000 for Septic to Sewer Conversion.  Raise your hand if you’ve been converted. 🤣🤣🤣
• $1.2 million  for “Capital Investments in Parks, Facilities, and Bus Shelters.”
• $1.4 million for “Critical Infrastructure (Roads and Bridges).
• $1 million for “Flood Elevation” in Highland Village.  Has this even been done?

More fraudulent spending of federal funds took place under the categories of “Public Outreach” for $95,000 and “Community Engagement” for $105,000, the explanation for which was nothing but more Duke Sorey word salad.

And even more shady business.

As we reveal how these federal funds were spent, keep in mind that Duke Sorey’s ambiguous description of “Community Engagement” is:

This program will allow community engagement to ensure the community members gain access to valued social settings and activities, feel that they are able to contribute meaningfully to those activities, and develop functional capabilities that enable them to participate fully.

Like we said — word salad.

Last year former Commissioner Barbara Kramer had been asking Duke and his staff for the balance in her contingency account, and as usual he ignored every single one of her emails.  She finally received a response on June 27, 2022 from then-Chief of Staff Francisco Medranda.

Barbara was completely surprised to learn that she had ARPA funds to use for “Community Engagement,” and immediately emailed Francisco back asking him to call her.

Of course, she never heard from Francisco, so she emailed Duke.

Once again, and as usual, Duke ignored her.

On September 5, 2022, Barbara emailed Duke — once again — asking how much was left in her contingency account and her ARPA account so she could allocate the funds.  When Chief Financial Officer Marcia Fennell responded, Barbara sent her a list of local organizations to distribute her contingency account to, and also directed her to give her entire $15,000.00 ARPA fund to the Friends of the Library.

Not surprisingly, right after the November 22, 2022 election, Barbara found out that absolutely none of her donations had been made even though all these funds had been included in the budget for Fiscal Year 2021-22.

And Duke continued to ignore her until she was out of office last November.

On March 23, 2023, Barbara emailed the City Clerk asking which meeting “the City Commission voted to give themselves a personal ARPA fund account,” or the meeting “where the former City Manager discussed giving the City Commissioners a personal ARPA fund account.”  If there was no such meeting or meetings, Barbara asked for “the policy for the Commissioners ARPA accounts so I can see how the Commissioners were advised as to how to spend this money.”

On April 25, 2023, Barbara finally received a response in the form of a spreadsheet entitled “ARPA Community Engagement Expenses.”  The title was mistyped as “FY2022-FY2023,” however, these expenditures were made during Fiscal Year 2021-22 (we fixed it for you).  Receipts for these expenditures are attached to the spreadsheet.

In a separate request, Commissioner Smukler also asked how all the ARPA funds allocated to the elected officials were spent for Fiscal Year 2021-22, and she received this spreadsheet:

As expected, there are so many problems with how Duke Sorey allocated these Federal tax dollars.

The most glaring of them is the fact that Commissioner Barbara Kramer was not even included!

Duke allocated $105,000 of ARPA funds to be split between seven (7) elected officials, which comes out to $15,000 each.  Notice there are only six (6) columns in this spreadsheet, which means he deliberately kept Barbara out of the loop.

Duke’s utter disregard and abominable insubordination of one of his seven bosses is just more proof that his termination for cause was more than justified.

The first thing we noticed was that Duke used Commissioner Fortuna Smukler’s funds in the amount of $2,244.00 to pay for Paule Villard’s alleged “group tutoring.”  As far as we know, the only “group tutoring” that Paule was involved in was an alleged SAT preparation course.

Which is adorable since Paule probably couldn’t pass an SAT exam to save her life.

This charge of $2,244.00 was interesting, however, because on January 24, 2022 we had made a Public Records Request for “copies of all documentation regarding the attached flyer for “SAT PREP FOR NMB HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS,” including but not limited to correspondences (paper and digital), memoranda, text messages, and telephone logs. Please also provide documentation regarding the permission to use the City’s official logo on this flyer, as well as the name(s) and credentials of the intructor(s) involved in this program.”  We received five documents, none of which had anything to do with our request.

We wrote back to the City Clerk asking if these alleged SAT courses are being held on City property, and if so, I wanted all costs associated with this matter, including employee pay in addition to “the name(s) and credentials of the instructor(s).”  We received back the usual “There are no additional responsive documents to your public records request.”

Now, all of a sudden it appears there was a cost, which only further proves that Duke Sorey was hiding the Jump Start Tutoring Center invoice from us in order to protect Paule from scrutiny, and further proving that his termination with cause was long overdue.

Even more interesting, Jump Start Tutoring Center, Inc. is owned by Chrissybil Boulin, one of the women Paule “honored” at her $28,872.36 self-promotional Friends & Family event she disingenuously called “Unsung Heroes,” which had absolutely no public purpose for the benefit of North Miami Beach residents.

But, we digress.

But back to Fortuna, Duke also took great liberties with the distribution of Commissioner Fortuna Smukler’s ARPA funds.  According to an email from Fortuna to Interim City Manager Mark Anonio, she advised him that the only expenditure from her ARPA funds that she approved was the $2,000.00 for Target gift cards for the children attending the annual Highland Village holiday party.  The remaining $13,408.37 spent on Fortuna’s Israeli Independence Day event was already in the General Fund budget and should not have been paid for with ARPA funds.

In Part 2, we’ll take a look at how the other five elected officials spent their ARPA funds.

Stay tuned.

Stephanie