In Part 3 of this series, we told you about an anonymous letter we received last August from a person claiming to be writing “on behalf of White police officers of the Opa-locka Police Department,” and asking us to “shine a light on this corruption and racism against us.” We also told you that we were only now presented with the opportunity to write about this tip because North Miami Beach City Manager Darvin Williams used to work in that godforsaken city. Unfortunately, he made a few enemies during his tenure when he discovered rampant public corruption and tried to expose and stamp it out.
Because no good deed goes unpunished, Mr. Williams’ commitment to truth and transparency cost him his job, which is how he eventually ended up in North Miami Beach. We can only hope his efforts to rid NMB of fraud and corruption come to fruition, but frankly, we do not expect much success as long as Michael Joseph occupies the mayoral seat on the dais.
Two days ago, Michael Joseph recruited a reporter at CBS Miami to do a hit piece of Darvin Williams.
Unfortunately, the story didn’t turn out to be the flex Michael was hoping for.
Even though this reporter only quoted him in her “news” article, and did not contact any of the other Commissioners for a comment (yeah, it was that obvious), the video was surprisingly unbiased.
No matter how much Michael’s Surrogate Army tries to attack Mr. Williams, he remains unflappable because he’s the one who has nothing to hide.
Unlike Michael Joseph.
Meanwhile, as we previously told you, a trio of miscreants have come out of the woodwork to cause trouble for Darvin Williams.
One of them was a North Miami Beach employee who filed an EEOC complaint, falsely claiming she was demoted because … she is Haitian.
Another EEOC complaint and a lawsuit were were filed by two former NMB employees who literally needed firing due to incompetence, but probably figured they had nothing to lose by whining about it.
Unfortunately, a precedent was set by the über-corrupt EX-City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey, during the two years that he ran the city into the ground and nearly into bankruptcy. When he finally, and rightfully, got fired he quickly filed a ridiculous lawsuit, hilariously claiming that HE was a whistleblower instead of being the sole cause of North Miami Beach’s demise.
Two years later, on the “advice” of the city’s insurance company, the Commission agreed to a settlement with the crook to the tune of $260,000.00, proving that it’s perfectly acceptable to negotiate with terrorists.
It didn’t matter that Duke Sorey’s case was complete BS, the big wigs at the insurance company decided not to go forward with a case that they would absolutely win, including a judgment for the reimbursement of attorneys’ fees. Instead they threw more taxpayer money at someone who should have been arrested, indicted, and imprisoned for misappropriating millions of dollars in the two years he mismanaged the city.
In fact, despite our dozens of warnings that Duke Sorey had no idea what he was doing, we now hear that $4.8 million of the approximately $21 million the city received in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) “were not properly obligated and expended within required federal deadlines,” as explained in a June 18, 2026 email from City Manager Darvin Williams.
Because Duke screwed up so badly, “the United States Department of the Treasury is demanding repayment of approximately $3.2 MILLION.” [Emphasis ours.]
Unfortunately, Duke’s departure did not fix the corruption in North Miami Beach. As soon as Michael Joseph was inexplicably elected as mayor the fraud and graft started all over again.
And now, City Manager Darvin Williams has the inauspicious task of cleaning up the mess that Duke left behind.
One of those messes is ironically a former employee who is now suing the City of North Miami Beach and Darwin Williams for allegedly violating her “due process rights” by “terminating her employment.”
Marline Monestime was recruited by Duke Sorey from his former stomping ground, the City of North Miami, in June of 2022 as his Economic Development Specialist. She outlasted Duke, who was fired in March of 2023, and in August of that year she was promoted to Chief of Staff, and then to Interim Assistant City Manager in June of 2025.
During the time she was bouncing up the proverbial corporate ladder, Marline was put in charge of “management oversight” on the ARPA project team, a responsibility which she obviously couldn’t handle.
In a positively scathing ARPA report presented to the City Commission at its June 17, 2025 meeting, former Chief Financial Officer Tarik Rahmani, described in great detail the serious problems city departments had regarding these funds.
He wrote [Emphasis ours]:
“Between 2022 and 2024, major problems developed in how the City managed its ARPA funds. The ARPA project team did not perform regular financial checks or track spending closely in Munis, the City’s financial system. They also did not compare what was budgeted to what was actually spent.
As a result, actual ARPA expenses were not fully reported to the U.S. Treasury. Some expenditures showed activity in Munis but were missing from official ARPA reports. These issues could have been avoided with regular review and stronger monitoring. These include inconsistencies in financial reporting, failure to align the general ledger with the project ledger, inaccurate budget allocations, and entry of obligations past the federal deadline.”
Mr. Rahmani continued:
“The U.S. Treasury’s SLFRF Compliance and Reporting Guidance states that recipients must obligate all ARPA funds by December 31, 2024. Obligations must be supported by executed contracts, purchase orders, or similar legal instruments finalized on or before that date. Treasury has clarified that recipients cannot increase their reported obligations beyond the deadline. Any transaction not fully obligated by December 31, 2024 (Exhibit 11), is at risk of being disallowed.”
Hey, Marline …
In an even more ironic twist, at the very same meeting Mr. Rahmani presented his ARPA Report, Marline Monestime placed on the Agenda her Budget Amendment to Fund Home Rehabilitation Program.
In her attached Memo, she had the chutzpah to claim that even though “the Home Rehabilitation Program was expected to be fully funded with ARPA resources,” the department was unable to meet the federal government’s December 31, 2024 deadline, “Staff is requesting a budget amendment of $500,000 from the General Fund Reserve to fund the remaining projects in the Home Rehabilitation Program.”
In essence, Marline Monestime was responsible for not only the loss of $3.2 million in ARPA funds, but also the draining of another half million dollars from the city’s reserves.
North Miami Beach taxpayers should be suing her and not the other way around!
As we previously reported, Marline Monestime was Michael Joseph’s hand-picked candidate for the City Manager position as a reward for covering his ass during the Algo Law Firm’s public corruption investigation.
Even more egregiously, Monestime conspired to push through the shady no-bid contract between the City of North Miami Beach and Figgers Communication Inc. at the insistence of none other than Michael Joseph.
In a Memorandum attached to his June 18th email, Mr. Williams goes into great detail about the current fiscal year’s $12 million deficit, which was filled using reserve funds “including approximately $4 million that was utilized to support recurring operating expenditures such as salaries and employee benefits.”
Mr. Williams went on to explain, “As a result of the current fiscal year’s operating deficit, City reserves are projected to decline to approximately $5 million by September 30, 2026. As a matter of sound financial management, Administration intends to recommend a formal reserve policy requiring the City to maintain unrestricted reserves sufficient to fund approximately three months of operating expenditures. Achieving that objective will require a disciplined, multi-year financial recovery strategy focused on reducing recurring expenditures, rebuilding reserves, and addressing both current and anticipated fiscal challenges.”
In other words, the City Manager has no choice but to eliminate 16 unnecessary and redundant positions that cost a whopping $2,939,462 of your hard-earned tax dollars.
As we mentioned in the previous segment of this miniseries, the final player in this twisted saga is current Opa-locka Police Chief Robin Starks, who told the Miami Times that she complained about then-Opa-locka City Manager Darvin Williams in “a letter to the city commission, the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and Florida Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel.” She indicated that in her letter she claimed that Williams and then-Police Chief Kenneth Ottley “violated the city charter and usurped commission direction by misusing city funds when retaining lawyers without proper approval, and improperly interfered in police investigations.”
On June 5, 2026 we made a public records request with the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission for this letter and a few days later we received a response with a copy of her letter, which states pretty much what she told the media.
I wrote back to the Commission’s Public Information Officer, “Can you please tell me if the Ethics Commission investigated this matter? If so, I’d like a copy of the final report.” Within 10 minutes he responded, “I have no record of a complaint being filed in the matter you reference.”
We also told you about an anonymous email we received on August 8, 2025 claiming to be sent “on behalf of White police officers of the Opa-locka Police Department,” and asking us to “shine a light on this corruption and racism against us.”
The attached letter, as well as a copy of a letter they had previously sent to their union president at the PBA, was even more revealing about Robin Starks’ alleged character and what a nightmare it was working under her “leadership” as then-Assistant Chief of Police.
The author of the letter wrote:
“We had a department full of veteran White officers with decades of service. Mr. Williams believed in merit and he rewarded officers based on performance, not playing racial politics. He proved it when he made sure that many of the White male veteran officers got pay raises when the new union contract passed. Many of us had already hit our pay cap, so what he did went above and beyond. He pushed for fair pay and equal treatment across the board.
Not Starks. She flat-out told a group of White male officers not to apply for promotions because she already had Black female officers picked out. She said it openly, no shame. We reported it. HR didn’t do jack. So we went straight to Mr. Williams. He immediately called for an investigation with an independent third party investigator. The investigator confirmed everything that we shared. Mr. Williams then started the process to fire Assistant Chief Robin Starks.
Mr. Williams is very courageous. Many of us know stories of him shutting down the gravy train for many of our Commission. He’s got some balls on him. I read your articles about how everyone was afraid to touch Chief Harvette Smith in North Miami Beach because she is a Black woman. It made me realize what a big deal it is was for Mr. Williams to initiate termination proceedings against Starks.”
Unfortunately, nothing ever came of the Opa-locka police officers’ appeal to the PBA.
The writer also referred to the firing of Mr. Williams as a political hit job, which we firmly believe was the case.
It is blatantly apparent that the complaints filed by North Miami Beach and Opa-locka public employees against Darvin Williams are completely without merit and will most likely go nowhere.
Instead of having his Surrogate Army gang up on Mr. Williams in the hopes of getting rid of him, North Miami Beach mayor Michael Joseph would do well to worry about being investigated for his own actual violations of local, state, and federal laws.
Just saying.
Stephanie
