Geller: Take My $50,000, Please!
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Former State Sen. Steve Geller says he has a problem: He can’t figure out who should get $50,000 in tainted money.
The money is from suspected scammer Scott Rothstein. It was earmarked for Geller’s campaign against County Commissioner Sue Gunzburger.
Geller now suspects Rothstein stole the money. He wants to give it back.
In a motion filed in Broward Circuit Court this week, Geller asked Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld to order Clerk of the Courts Howard Forman to take the $50,000 and keep it safe. Under Geller’s plan, Forman would give it back to fraud victims once the Rothstein mess is sorted out.
Geller said he was forced to take court action because no one has been appointed to take care of Rothstein’s personal financial affairs.
Rothstein wrote a $50,000 personal check in September to Geller’s Floridians For A Stronger Tomorrow, a political committee.
“Since the contribution was not made from the law firm RRA (which has a receiver), but rather from Rothstein individually, the plaintiff (Geller) is uncertain as to who should receive these funds, Geller’s pleading states.
Geller told the court he waves all rights to the money, any interest and any attorney’s fees stemming from his court intervention.
Gunzburger also got around $8,500 in Rothstein money. She returned the money to the receiver for Rothstein’s law firm, including money not originally from RRA.
November 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Steve Geller’s biggest contributor was a con man. He is now on the phone to his other con men friends at Mutual Benefits and the developers to replace Rothstein’s money.
November 19th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Figure it out Steve, Sue did. Fairly easy dumbo. Give it to the receiver.
November 19th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
You’re correct. It’s fairly easy to do it the easy and wrong way.
Sue took money from Scott Rothstein, Kimmie, all those phony corporations, RRA, and others. She’s giving all of the money to RRA so that they can stay in business. Repeat, she’s giving $$ that were scammed from investors or innocent people like Ed Morse to the firm that may have helped commit the crimes. Simple? yes. Wrong? yes. Immoral? yes. Easy for Sue to do? yes.
Maybe the $$ should go to RRA. Maybe they should be set aside for the benefit of reimbursing victims, whoever they are. Who the hell does Sue think she is to decide who should get the $$, instead of letting a judge do it. She’s showing no concern for innocent victims, she’s just trying to do what’s easiest for Sue.
And some of us find it interesting that after Sue took around $10,000 from Rothstein and his firm the day before she brought up an issue on the Commission for him, where she took the $$ months before Geller’s group did, that she’s the one complaining. Typical. Gonezberger does pay to play, takes $$ from Rothstein, and then throws [feces] at Geller. It must be sad to be on the Government payday for 28 years, put your whole family on the government payroll, and then have so little to show that your entire campaign is throwing [feces] at your opponent.
OK, why don’t you kids now show your typical elementary school bully behavior and pick on Geller’s weight? Really sad.
November 19th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
The Florida Democratic Party, Florida Republican Party, Ellyn Bogandoff, Sue Gunzburger, Alex Sink, Jeff Atwater, etc etc etc, all did exactly the same thing with the RRA money (including the Rothstein personal checks): they returned all the money to the court-appointed receiver. You can just tell it is killing Geller to give it back cuz he’s now maybe to last one holding onto the tainted political money. Stop the excuses, Steve, and do what every other Democrat and Republican did who got the stolen money (including donations from Scott and Kim): GIVE IT TO THE RECEIVER. TODAY!!!!!
November 19th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Ron:
Don’t you ever work?
Sorry, I forgot. All you do is spend all day on Government pay blogging. Nice job. I wish I had elected officials in my family.
November 19th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
David:
Don’t YOU ever work? All you do is spend your days feeding Buddy bullshit about your candidates.
Have you ever won a race where you didnt have more to spend then your opponent?
November 20th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
All those people that didn’t return it to the right person had to return even more money in the future because a new creditor comes around.
I don’t think that would be fair, but I wouldn’t put it past our legal system.
November 21st, 2009 at 7:08 am
What about Evan Jenne, BS i mean Barbra Stern, and the rest of Judy Stern cronies? When are they going to return SR money?
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:05 am
Politics notwithstanding, I think it’s a “stand up” thing of Geller to do. There is NO WAY (in my opinion) that Rothstein’s partners didn’t know or at least suspect he was throwing around dirty money. If you had a partner that was suddenly spending millions of dollars, wouldn’t you make sure none of it was yours??
If Geller has a chance to direct that money back to the people that got robbed of it rather than give it to the law partners that turned a blind eye to it being stolen in the first place, I think it’s a great move.
I have no idea if Geller is genuinely trying to do the right thing or if he’s grandstanding (he’s a politician, so it’s probably a little of both), but who cares? If the end result is that fraud victims get some of their money back, I couldn’t care less what his motives are as long as he did the right thing.
Good job, Senator. I wish more of your political colleagues had made the same effort.