The July 27, 2023 Florida Bulldog‘s article, Charge it! North Miami Beach officials racked up $1.4 million in unauthorized purchases on city credit cards, report says, details Michael A. Pizzi, Esq.’s Investigative Report on the abuse of the City’s Procurement Cards (P Cards) ever since Arthur “Duke” Sorey was hired as City Manager.

The Bulldog reported:

“Dozens of North Miami Beach officials, including fired City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey III and three current city commissioners, racked up $1.4 million in unauthorized purchases on their city-issued credit cards between 2020 and the first three months of this year, according to a recently concluded investigation.

The credit-card abuse during the 27-month period included $296,211 of unexplained purchases from 67 employees on Amazon.com; retail store shopping sprees totalling $185,683; and $358,339 worth of items bought at hardware stores, according to a report prepared by Michael Pizzi, a private attorney hired by the city to analyze the purchases.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Pizzi’s report only scratched the surface of just how rampant the abuse really was, which we will explain in a minute.

What we were surprised to learn from the Bulldog article was that Duke filed a lawsuit against the City on July 21, 2023.

According to the article, “Sorey denied any wrongdoing in a July 21 Miami-Dade lawsuit he filed against the city, [suspended Mayor Anthony] DeFillipo, Vice Mayor Jay Chernoff and City Commissioners Fortuna Smukler and Phyllis Smith.  The ex-city manager alleges Pizzi’s report is bogus, and that it is being used as a reason to deny him his severance package.”

Well, Duke Sorey can deny “wrongdoing” all he wants but we here at VotersOpinion know otherwise.

And we have all the receipts!

As expected, Duke’s adorable little lawsuit is filled with figments of his imagination and outright lies.

Not surprisingly, Duke accused the four elected officials of who fired him of “engaging in misconduct.”

Sorey then gave a brief history of his illustrious “career” in public service, beginning as a budget analyst at the City of North Miami, then he “rose through the ranks to budget administrator, budget director, and the coordinator of its Community Redevelopment Agency.”

He neglected to mention where he really got his start.

He also skipped the part where he applied for (and was denied) the position of Assistant Parks and Recreation Director.

He then boasted, “In or around July 2015, North Miami appointed Sorey to be its Deputy City Manager, and on February 4, 2020, North Miami further elevated Sorey to the position of Interim City Manager.”

What he deliberately left out is the fact that Duke Sorey was passed over — not once, but twice — for the position of permanent City Manager in favor of individuals who were actually qualified for the position.

What Duke also deliberately left out is the fact that the only reason he received any promotions at all is because of … nepotism.

But, of course.

Duke’s father, Arthur “Coach Duke” Sorey, Jr., is a literal North Miami legend.

In addition to his job of 37 years as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, Coach Duke was a Vietnam veteran, “a coordinator for the food drive and the Combined Federal Campaign, as well as doing fundraising for the Muscular Dystrophy Association,” according to a May, 2022 article, A Street Named Sorey, in the National Association of Letter Carrier’s The Postal Record.

The article explained:

“When his children were young, he began coaching—first T-ball, then eventually baseball with the National Little League Association, as well as football and soccer with the North Miami Parks and Recreation Department. For 12 years, ‘I was coaching yearround,’ he said, and he was known to many as ‘Coach Duke.'”

“Sorey spent so much time at the park, he eventually became vice president, then president, of the Little League, and served on the North Miami Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.”

“During this time, he expanded his community involvement further by becoming a member of his homeowners association board, rising two years later to board president.”

Arthur “Duke” Sorey, Jr. eventually ran for City Council and “served as the first Black elected official in North Miami from 1995 to 1999.”

On February 28, 2022, the City named a portion of NW 128 Street for him.

The Postal Record also noted that Coach Duke had “plenty of advice for other letter carriers who want to get involved in their communities.”

“I would say, you’ve got to have a desire to do good. And then help others do good. You’ve got to do it because you care—about your family and the community.  Give people respect and get to that middle ground about what needs to be done in the community.”

Sadly, Coach Duke’s first born and namesake didn’t follow in his very big footsteps.

In fact, North Miami Beach ex-City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey possesses absolutely none of his father’s deep-rooted commitment to service, integrity, community, and honor.  Yet he cheated his way up the proverbial corporate ladder by riding the coattails of his daddy’s legacy.

By the time Duke conned his way into the Manager’s position after conspiring with North Miami Beach Criminal Commissioners Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean, who held a fortuitous majority on the dais, he had already burned his bridges in North Miami with both the City Council and especially the residents.

As Interim City Manager of North Miami, Duke’s abject incompetence, fiscal mismanagement, disregard for policy, and incapacity for humility had plunged the City into near bankruptcy.

But, the four North Miami Beach Criminal Commissioners saw Duke’s special talent for creating destruction and chaos as an asset rather than a liability.  And the rest is history.

At the March 21, 2023 Commission meeting, then-Commissioner (now-acting Mayor) Jay Chernoff was the swing vote in firing Duke without cause.  When later confronted by angry residents, Jay told them he was concerned that Duke would follow through on his threat to sue the City, citing a previous lawsuit against the City of Hallandale Beach, which resulted in a $4.4 million jury verdict for the Plaintiff.

Unfortunately for Duke, as we already reported, in that case the Plaintiff was an employee who blew the whistle against a sitting Commissioner.  Duke, on the other hand, has whistleblowers lined up to testify against him!

By the time the April 18, 2023 Commission meeting took place, Jay Chernoff had learned exactly how much corruption had taken place before he was elected.  So he decided to rescind his previous vote and made a motion to fire Duke FOR CAUSE!

Needless to say, the motion passed “4-2 with Commissioner Fleurimond and Commissioner Joseph opposed and Commissioner Jean absent,” according to the Minutes of that meeting.

Ultimately, North Miami Beach residents were saved from having to throw away another $92,307.69, on top of the millions of dollars that Duke had already blown through, much of it stolen from taxpayers through his mismanagement of the City.

And as we’ve reported time and time again, there are dozens of publicly documented acts of misfeasance, malfeasance, incompetence, fiscal irresponsibility, and general scumbaggery committed by the most despicably corrupt City Manager in the entire history of North Miami Beach.

In Duke Sorey’s deranged mind, however, he actually believes he did nothing wrong.

In fact, in paragraphs 21 and 22 of his delusional Complaint, he actually alleged:

21.  Sorey was a valuable asset to the City and he consistently sought to improve the community.

22. Throughout his tenure as City Manager, Sorey refused to engage in unauthorized and inappropriate conduct when requested by City personnel, and Sorey reported such misconduct to other City officials.

In paragraph 23, Duke claims that he refused “to allow non-City personnel, including Defendant Smukler’s husband, to review bids for public works projects, as requested by the City’s Chief Procurement Officer.”

Except, he’s lying.

Donna Rockfeld, the former Chief Procurement Officer he was referring to and who Duke fired for telling the truth, has evidence to refute that claim, and we’ll have some extra popcorn on hand when she testifies in Court.

Just saying.

Duke’s most hilarious claim is outlined in paragraphs 24 through 32, where he “takes credit” for saving ex-City “Attorney” Hans Ottinot from being “improperly” terminated.  He wrapped up this journey into fantasy land in paragraph 33 with:

33.  As a result of Sorey’s refusal to violate the City’s Charter, and notwithstanding Sorey’s excellent record and demonstrated commitment to the City and the community, Defendant DeFillipo informed Sorey of Defendants’ intention to terminate Sorey “without cause.”

Duke really amps up the drama — and the lies — in paragraph 56, when he claims he “had accumulated 389 hours of annual leave, 270 hours of sick leave, 16 hours of floater benefits, and 8 hours of birthday leave, in addition to the Severance Pay and other Severance Benefits to which Sorey is legally and contractually entitled.”

This is one of the biggest whoppers Duke ever told!

We reviewed each and every single one of Duke’s paychecks and carefully examined the number of hours (earned and used) of annual and sick leave, as well as his floater and birthday leave hours.  We even prepared a handy dandy spreadsheet so we could view it at a glance.

According to his final paycheck for the week ending March 22, 2023, he left his employment with 365.480 hours of annual leave (not 389 as he stated in his lawsuit), 270.667 hours of sick leave, 15.000 hours of floater, and 8.000 hours of birthday leave, for a total of 659.47 hours.

Had those accumulated hours been correct, at his hourly rate of $118.846, he would have been entitled to a final compensation check of $78,375.37.

However, we also prepared a handy dandy spreadsheet of Duke’s absences from work based on emails and memos he disseminated, and we discovered 168 hours of used annual and sick leave time, worth $19,966.13, that were not listed on any of his paychecks!

Deducting these stolen unreported hours from the actual hours listed on his final paycheck would leave Duke a total of 491.47 unused hours, and a check in the amount of $58,411.21.

However, we’ve listed only the absences that we have been able to document.  There were many more days that Duke took off without deducting hours from his accrued leave and sick time, as evidenced in part by former Chief Finance Officer Marcia Fennell’s statement documented in Mr. Pizzi’s Investigative report, i.e.:

Marcia Fennell also advised Arthur Sorey that department heads and their staff were “stealing city time” by taking time off and not submitting leave slips. For example, Sorey’s Executive Assistant, Ashley Francois, went on vacation and never submitted any leave slip.

Arthur Sorey took a lot of time off and never submitted leave slips. He told Marcia Fennell not to track his time. Even when he was clearly not in the office, he never submitted a slip.

This was not Duke’s first rodeo “stealing city time.”

We have heard from multiple sources in North Miami that he rarely submitted leave slips even when he didn’t show up to work.  He merely continued his usual and customary thievery when he went to North Miami Beach.  Duke actually believes he’s entitled to your money!

When Duke was fired at the March 21, 2023 meeting, the City Commission voted to “hold off payment of accrued leave (vacation and sick) time until a reconciliation is done,” according to the Minutes of that meeting.

Paragraph 53 of Duke’s lawsuit states that he received a “Partial Payment” $51,849.44, so apparently that reconciliation was done and the auditor discovered an additional 55.20 stolen unreported hours that even we didn’t have a record of!

Duke’s final compensation check was for 436.27 unused hours, and not the 659.47 hours he claimed he was owed.

And that’s just one of the many, many, many reasons Duke Sorey was fired for cause.

Not the least of which was the egregious, deliberate misappropriation of public funds by way of the wasteful and fraudulent use of the City’s Purchasing Cards (P Cards) by Duke, his fourth floor cronies, and the four Criminal Commissioners, Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean.

Even though in his lawsuit Duke blames the “Pizzi Report” for his eventual firing for cause, he’s putting the cart before the horse.

At the same April 18, 2023 meeting that Duke was finally fired for cause, the City Commission also voted to hire Michael A. Pizzi, Esq. to “investigate past alleged misuse of City funds,” which report was not submitted to the City Manager, City Attorney, and elected officials until July 18, 2023 — two months later.

Duke’s “for cause” firing was not as a result of the “Pizzi Report,” but it was Duke’s provable penchant for public corruption that made the investigation necessary in the first place.

Starting with the most infamous transgression of them all – Duke Sorey’s blatant abuse of the City’s taxpayer-funded Procurement Cards, a/k/a P Cards.

VotersOpinion readers know that we have been on top of this since we first started tracking the P Card spending by the elected officials in October of 2021.

We knew back then that there was a problem and we first started reporting about it in the first of our five part series, P Card Madness, Part 1. North Miami Beach Criminal Commissioners charge up a storm on your dime!

We followed that up with Part 2, and then investigated the P Card abuse by Duke and his cronies in Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Our investigation finally got the attention of the City Commission after the November 2022 election when the newly elected Commissioners Jay Chernoff and Phyllis Smith were voted in, and the Criminal Commissioners lost their majority when their co-conspirator, Paule Villard, lost.

In May, State Senator Jason Pizzo brought the P Card disaster to the state’s joint legislative audit committee, only to have it withdrawn when the Criminal Commissioners and State Representative Christopher Benjamin ridiculously made it all about race.

As usual.

The Florida Bulldog reported:

Pizzo, a Democrat who alternates the committee’s chairmanship with [Republican state representative Michael] Caruso, said he decided to postpone his audit request to allow the tensions to simmer down.

“The allegation was made that the audit request was racist, which is ridiculous,” Pizzo said. “I really didn’t want that to cloud or suggest anything else other than the pure intention of what the audit is meant for.”

The Bulldog article also noted, “Pizzo said he plans to resubmit his request for Florida Auditor General Sherrill Norman to comb through North Miami Beach’s books in the fall when the committee reconvenes.”

In any event, everyone from South Florida to Tallahassee now knows about Duke Sorey’s P Card problem, and we have all the receipts.

Unfortunately, Michael Pizzi’s Investigative Report only scratched the surface because the database of P Card expenditures he was provided by the City was incomplete — it contained only approximately 37% of the actual purchases made on the 114 credit cards issued between April 2, 2020 and April 3, 2023.

We discovered the discrepancy when we reviewed Mr. Pizzi’s report and noticed a huge problem with the finding of “Food purchases totaling $70,906.62.”

As you know, we here at VotersOpinion had already extensively researched the P Card expenditures of Duke Sorey, his fourth floor cronies, and all the elected officials, and that figure was not even close to the damage they did.

In the blogs, P Card Madness, Part 4: Duke & The Gang’s Taxpayer-Funded Food Orgy, 2021 Edition and 2022 Edition, we told you that Duke, his then-Assistant City Managers Gedel “Beelzebub” Merzius and Kemarr Brown, then-Chief of Staff Francisco Medranda, and then-Senior Advisor Athalie Edwards charged $49,623.85 worth of food in only nineteen months from June 4, 2021 (shortly after Duke was hired) through the P Card Statements ending December 4, 2022.

In addition, there were the $3,015.95 in food charges by Duke’s then-Executive Assistant/Travel Companion Ashley Francois, $284.44 worth of illegal food purchases (while receiving a per diem check for meals) by Duke’s personal clothier/ex-Chief Procurement Officer Phillip Ford, and the $3,373.50 food charges made by Duke’s first ex-Chief of Staff/Political Operative Willis Howard.

We had already discovered a grand total of $56,297.74 in food purchases made by Duke and his seven cronies in only a year and a half, so Mr. Pizzi’s reported food spending of $70,906.62 by all of the City’s card holders during a three year period just didn’t add up.

So we started digging.

The first thing we did was search the City’s database for one of Duke’s favorite eateries, Panera Bread.  Imagine our utter surprise to find only FOUR (4) purchases at Panera Bread in the entire database, when we already had reviewed the actual P Card statements and knew there were a hell of a lot more than four!

Duke Sorey himself used his P Card at Panera Bread for four transactions in one month alone!  There were a total of twelve (12) purchases at Panera Bread by Duke, Francisco, Athalie, Ashley, and Willis alone.

We also happen to have the May 4, 2022 P Card statements of Police Chief Harvette Smith and Police Major Stuart Nichols, and there were three (3) purchases at Panera Bread between them in just one month and not one of them were listed in the City’s database!

We immediately suspected foul play by one or more of Duke’s cronies who still worked in North Miami Beach.

The database was provided to Michael Pizzi by Chief Information Officer Ricardo Castillo, who previously worked in the City of North Miami with Duke, and was hired by Duke in North Miami Beach on September 27, 2021.

However, the database was prepared by the Chief Procurement Officer Shereece George, who was promoted to the top spot after Phillip Ford was fired.

We then counted the number of purchases made by Duke Sorey, and discovered that the City’s database listed only 73 transactions, yet the spreadsheets we had in our possession — provided by Duke himself in a Memo to the Commission on March 13, 2023, showed that he used his P Card a total of 218 times!

The next thing we did was compare several other employees’ transactions listed City’s database to the spreadsheets from the Memo, and we found even more discrepancies, as follows:

• Athalie Edwards: Castillo database – 83 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 119 purchases
• Francisco Medranda: Castillo database – 119 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 160 purchases
• Kemarr Brown: Castillo database – 17 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 33 purchases
• Gedel Merzius: Castillo database – 45 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 65 purchases
• Willis Howard: Castillo database – 91 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 109 purchases
• Paule Villard: Castillo database – 29 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 97 purchases
• Michael Joseph: Castillo database – 73 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 108 purchases
• McKenzie Fleurimond: Castillo database – 111 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 171 purchases
• Daniela Jean: Castillo database – 68 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 124 purchases
• Fortuna Smukler: Castillo database – 36 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 55 purchases
• Anthony DeFillipo: Castillo database – 16 purchases; Sorey spreadsheet – 37 purchases

The above sampling alone reflects that only 37% of the actual number of P Card purchases were provided to Mr. Pizzi!

Of course, we immediately sent an email to City Manager Mario Diaz about this urgent matter, and stated:

The withholding of this crucial information appears to be a deliberate attempt to sabotage Mr. Pizzi’s investigation of Arthur Sorey by one or more of his “Friends & Family Plan” hires. I firmly believe that a criminal conspiracy was at play here.  This is not hyperbole.  The statistics speak for themselves.

I cannot stress enough that Mr. Pizzi’s investigation was greatly compromised by the lack of complete information provided to him.  Had Mr. Pizzi been given all of the information he requested and should have received, his analysis of the P Card abuse that took place during the Sorey administration would have been infinitely more devastating.

Heads should roll over this, starting with the person who prepared the deficient database and sent it to Mr. Pizzi for his investigation of Duke Sorey’s corruption, and who is obviously covering for her former boss.

And as we all know, the cover-up is sometimes worse than the crime.

Even with only a fraction of fraudulent P Card transactions listed in the Pizzi Investigative Report, the results still show the massive amount of corruption that permeated through North Miami Beach City government for the two very long years that Arthur “Duke” Sorey was at the helm.

Duke Sorey’s frivolous lawsuit is as laughable as his qualifications to be an administrator of any municipality or government agency.

In his complaint, Duke is asking the Court to fully honor the separation terms of the Employment Agreement as if he were fired without cause.

We here at VotersOpinion are going to do everything in our power to provide irrefutable proof that there was more than enough cause to not only fire him, but to send him to prison, where he belongs.

Stephanie