Ft. Meyers -- Florida real estate developers were selling houses as fast as they could build them until the bottom fell out of the market. Now, hundreds of new homes and condos stand empty, threatened with decay and vandalism.

What can property owners do to preserve their investment until a house is sold? Some are turning to a unique publication, Gary Dunn's Caretaker Gazette.

"And so we're getting more and more advertisements from real-estate investors who are stuck with a home they can't sell someplace, and they just want even a trustworthy house-sitter to live in this empty home."

It's a win-win for anyone wanting a free place to live and a property owner with an unsold empty house. Dunn has been publishing the Caretaker Gazette since 1983.

Dunn says Florida is a booming job market for house-sitters, where real-estate speculators can't find buyers and just want someone to watch over their investment.

"We've had some of our subscribers take one of these house-sitting positions in a spec-home a few years ago, like a brand new home. They have to keep it in nice shape for the Realtors, but they get to live there rent-free. This way, there are no more break-ins since they have someone living there."

The Census Bureau revealed that 18 percent, or 1.6 million, of the Sunshine State's homes are sitting 
vacant. That's a rise of more than 63 percent during the past 10 years.

Les Coleman is a Emmy Award winning investigative Reporter and Author.  Afflicted with Alzheimer's, he is spending the Summer of 2013 visiting family around the country , and discovering off-beat stories.

Sex Crimes On The High Seas

Sex Crimes On The High Seas

By Les Coleman

All Rights Reserved

Cruise ship crime is on the increase according to a south Florida Maritime law firm.   One of the most alarming trends is the rise in sex crimes committed by cruise ship’s crew, and even senior officers. Crew members, from many countries are recruited by agencies, not the cruise lines,  who very seldom conduct full background checks.  The nice waiter serving you  an umbrella drink at the poolside Tiki bar could be a sex offender or even a serial rapist.

Princess Cruises' Captain Peter Russell, 64, of Bicker Road, Donington, UK, a farming area, worked aboard cruise ships as a captain for Cundard Line and Princess Cruises. A 14-year-year-old child told her parents that she was sexually assaulted in her cabin, in her bed, as she slept by Princess Cruises' Captain Peter Russell. The thought of that is really just too hard to grasp. It was so hard to grasp, the child thought it was dream.

After arriving home from her cruise, the child realized it was not a dream. Apparently, the captain had let himself into her cabin with as master key card. The girl began getting contacts from Russell on MSN Messenger, asking for nude photos of herself, engaging in indecent conversation and asking her to perform a sex act on herself while chatting online with him on her home computer. That was when the child realized it was no dream, and produced the chat transcripts for her parents.

Her parents contacted police and on October 14, 2010, having admitted the crime, Peter Russell was convicted of two charges of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity together with sexual activity in the presence of a child and a further charge of sexual activity with a child.

In a typical United Kingdom 'soft-on-child-sex crime' sentence, Russell was sentenced to only 9 months in prison and required to register as a sex offender in the United Kingdom for a period of 10 years. The light sentence was given because Russell's attorney said his client had a long history of honor at sea. That of course, might be because Russell was only caught for this one crime. Are we do believe that Russell woke up one morning, late in his life, and decided to be a child molester?

It is unclear which ship Peter Russell was the captain aboard on during the attack, but records put him on both Sea Princess and Sun Princess in recent years. Captain Peter Russell was working for Carnival Corp since they purchased the Cunard Line in April 1998. Before that he had been employed with Cunard Line for a number of years. He retired at age 50 from Exxon as a tanker captain.

This puts child molester Peter Russell working on cruise ships for at least 13 years, perhaps as many as 18 years,  before he was arrested and convicted for the attack on this child. The question now posed is, how many children did he actually molest aboard his ships or in port?

A son of a child molester, Jeremy Pike, a cruise ship youth director and Grade 5 teacher at Glen Street Public School in south Oshawa, Ontario has been in custody since July 19, 2005. Police were called on July 13, 2005 by the Durham Children’s Aid Society after receiving a report of sexual assault allegations against Pike.

He worked aboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Line's  Adventure Of The Seas in 2003 and 2004. He may have worked on other cruise ships before or after that time period as well. Police found pictures of Pike posing with children on his lap while they were aboard a cruise ship and say Pike's crimes go back to 1998.

With a job aboard a cruise ship as a youth director, he clearly had positioned himself to be in contact with children, and to gain their trust, as well as the trust of their parents while aboard a cruise ship.

Pike pleaded guilty to 10 charges relating to assaults on six boys, some of them as young as six years old when they were abused in incidents that ranged from sexual touching to sodomy. Pike is facing 14 years in prison for his crimes against children, a rather light sentence by United States standards.

There were also videos of Pike with some of the children. Police say the videos amounted to 13 hours of recordings. The prosecution says some of the boys appear to have slept through the assaults, and have little memory of the incidents. Although police have identified six victims, the identities of two young boys Mr. Pike filmed himself abusing haven't been conclusively determined.

.

Police racked up 80 charges against him in the course of their investigation. At the time of his arrest, Durham Regional Police seized computer images from Jeremy Pike's home in Bowmanville as part of their investigation into sex attacks on two 5 year old boys dating back to 1998.

The known window of crimes is possibly 1998 to July 2005. However he may have been assaulting children since the early 90s, when he was in his early 20s.

Hery Krispiyanto, 30, from Klitren, Yogykarta was a bartender aboard the Carnival Freedom cruise ship. He was arraigned June 2, 2010 on a count of sex abuse of a minor after being indicted the week before.

Court records say the girl, 14,  identified as "T.W.," was aboard Carnival's Freedom ship, which left from the Port of Fort Lauderdale, Florida in April 2009. While on the cruise, T.W. and her parents allege they became acquainted with Krispiyanto. T.W. said Krispiyanto was nice to her.

T.W. told investigators she was alone on the upper deck of the ship one night when Krispiyanto walked up behind her, grabbed her arm and pulled her into a nearby employee-only room and closed the door, records said.

Krispiyanto allegedly began to touch T.W. inappropriately, and she repeatedly told him to stop, court records said. T.W. said she tried to fight him, but Krispiyanto raped her, the criminal complaint said.

Hery Krispiyanto, Carnival Freedom crew member,  was sentenced in Orlando, Florida federal court on September 30, 2010 for one count of sexual abuse of a minor after he changed his plea to guilty, no doubt as an effort to shorten his prison sentence. He was given a 37-month prison sentence.

In addition to the prison time, Krispiyanto was ordered to pay about $4,360 in restitution.

After the incident, the family hired Cruise Bruise partner maritime lawyer, Charles Lipcon of the Florida law firm Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina & Winkleman. Mr. Lipcon sued Carnival Corp and was able to get a settlement for the rape victim. The victim, her name "Taylor", came out to speak of the crime after a settlement had been reached. She, her parents and Charles Lipcon were on ABC Nightline.

James Bell was director of a cruise line and owner of a company that financed cruise lines. Bell was director of Dolphin Cruise Line, owner of the Dolphin IV and also the SeaBreeze ships out of Miami. James Dickson Bell II was a native of Akron Ohio. He and his wife lived the high life in an 18-room mansion, were members of the country club as well-connected socialites.  In 1977, police would learn terrible things happened in an apartment at the hands of a local socialite.

He picked up poor kids off the street, luring them with the money that kept him in high society, offering $5 to $15 to the child, if they would just come visit with him. When police arrested Bell, he had over 1500 pornographic images hidden in his closet. The children had been lured to the apartment, stipped naked and photographed. Pictures showed the children having sex with Bell as well.  Children were as young as 3, 6 and 7. Police say that some of Bell's high society friends came to the apartment to photograph the children too, but none were ever charged. All along, Bell was married and had two little girls at home.

The child molester was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but due to the influence his high priced friends had, he was able to get out prison in only three years and nine months at his first parole hearing in May 1981.

By 1998 police had been tipped off that Bell and a woman, Tina Marie Oakley, 28, who worked as a babysitter for various families were taking children to motel rooms. He would sexually assault them while she took photographs of the sexual assaults.

In one case, Oakley, who had two sons of her own, had been offering to babysit free of charge,  a little 7-year-old girl who lived with her poor grandmother. The grandmother had custody after the parents abandoned her and her two siblings.  Oakley would take the take little girl to Disneyworld and buy her toys.  But, then the little girl began meeting Bell at the Feros Court Motel, room #18,  338 S. Federal Highway, in Dania Beach. Bell sexually assaulted her while Oakley took photos with a Polaroid camera.

The little girl told her brother she didn't want to go with Oakley anymore. Puzzled, the boy talked to their grandmother and the little girl unfolded the horrors that went on in room #18.

James Dickson Bell II, CEO of Dolphin Cruise Line was convicted on 17 counts sexual assault against a child in Florida and sentenced to three life terms in prison, plus 30 years. Police had accumulated the photographs of dozens of children he had molested.

-       30 –

Les Coleman is a journalist, writer, author, and radio & television news producer.  His book, TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS, about his time with U.S. Intelligence, is listed as one of the  top 10 most controversial books of all time.  He lives in Florida.

FL Real Estate Tax Scam

Investigative Report

 The Miami Herald reports that Florida is the number one state in the country for international residential real estate sales, with almost one-third of the nation's foreign-backed property transactions. Most of the deals are in cash. However, the State of Florida and the federal government may be left holding the bag, according to this investigative report from Les Coleman.

Some investors in the Florida housing market have found a way to avoid paying everything from state title transfer fees to federal capital gains taxes. How? By going off-shore, to places like a Caribbean island called Nevis.

The domestic housing bust has made Florida properties very appealing to overseas investors wanting to buy a house or condo in the Sunshine State, and 76 percent of them pay in cash. State and federal governments normally would get their cut of each transaction in the form of fees and capital gains taxes. However, a clever loophole is leaving the tax man's pockets empty when investors set up a shell company in an off-shore tax haven to buy that Florida condo.

R.M. Woodnutt, a former off-shore agent in Gibraltar, says tax avoidance is the name of the game.

"If you transfer the stock in the offshore company and do not actually sell the company or the real estate property outright, then you certainly avoid paying any taxes on the transaction. That is the beauty of all this."

The Miami International Real Estate Congress claims foreign investment in South Florida is growing, and industry experts are predicting that next year, in 2012, there will be even more international interest in the area.

Creating an offshore company is simple, and can even be done online: www.OffshoreFormations247.com specializes in creating shell companies to hide individual identities and assets. It is based in Nevis, a little Caribbean island just 200 miles south of Puerto Rico.

"A lot of people like Nevis 'cause it's quick and easy: three-to-five day turnaround to get a company back. For an LLC it costs only $1,295, a corporation is only $1,695. The only thing you need is name of the company, who the director will be, and where to send it."

The offshore company buys the property in Florida. When it goes to unload it, the Bearer Certificates of company ownership are transferred to the new owners. There is no record in Florida of a sell-buy transaction, so no transfer fees or capital gains taxes are ever paid.

Rosa Schecter, an international real estate attorney in Coral Gables, points out that buying Florida property normally requires slogging through a lot of red tape and paying thousands in taxes and fees.

"There are different kinds of taxes. There are transfer taxes that are associated with every real estate transaction in Florida that you have to pay on a deed; there also are intangible taxes that are due on promissory notes, and documentary stamp taxes. If a property is sold and there is gain on it, obviously there is tax to be paid on that gain."

Such taxes and fees are never recorded because, as far as Florida is concerned, the property never changed hands - the deed is still recorded in the offshore company's name. What did change hands was the stock in the offshore company, a transaction that need not be disclosed to anyone.

Most overseas buyers do not qualify for an exemption from capital gains taxes, since the properties are not usually their primary residence. Forming an offshore company to purchase a house in Florida hides any record of the property changing hands, thus no capital gains are recorded on the tax rolls.

As one offshore agent we'll call "Manny" told us, there are advantages for American citizens, too, like dodging debts, child support or alimony payments.

"So a guy pays cash and he titles the real estate in the name of the off-shore company, and he never owned that property before, then his creditors come looking for the property and they can't find it because it doesn't show up under his name."

The question is, will the state and federal treasuries ever see a penny? Several state and federal law enforcement agencies have been made aware of this off-shore scheme.

Further information is available at www.nevisisland.com and www.offshore.barclays.com.

This story was made possible through the assistance of the community of spot.us. A heartfelt thank you goes out to all members of the community for supporting investigative journalism and believing in new models to sustain journalism.

Les Coleman/Deb Courson Smith, Public News Service - FL

National Underwater Burial Ground

Limbaugh Family Past link to Nazis

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5941220-limbaugh-family-linked-to-early-nazi-movement

Rick Scott - Another member of the Loser Generation

If you happen to be down in Florida and click on the TV you will likely see the face of this bald guy, Rick Scott, spewing his virtues about why he should be the next Governor.

One recent TV spot shows him asking, "where I you seen this good looking bald fellow before"?

Where?

All over the news.

Maybe on a Wanted Poster in the local Post Office?

Rick Scott was co-founder and CEO of Columbia/HCA in the 1990s, when the FBI launched a massive, multi-state investigation that led to the company pleading guilty to criminal charges of overbilling the government.

Now he is urging Floridians to make him the CEO of the State . His latest tirade is advocating the Arizona immigration law for Florida. His financial conservative - social police state mentality is a scary mix and any sane citizen should be scared to death of this soft spoken Mad Man.

Scott is another example of the Lost Generation, born in the late 50"s and 60's -- now appearing on the world of politics with little common sense, or passion for the common good. From Newt Gingrich to Sarah Palin, the Lost Generation is certainly telling the rest of us that politics and crime is the same thing.

Sarah Palin is on Fed Welfare

Sarah Palin may hate the Federal Government but she is living on our Fed Tax $$$!

. Alaska. Alaska doesn't have a state income tax, state sales tax or a state inheritance tax. As tax burdens go, it's the best state to live in.

It hasn't always been that way. In 1978, Alaska was ranked 49th, making it one of the most tax-heavy states in the country. Residents can thank federal funds and big oil for the dramatic reversal.Three years ago, federal funding accounted for almost one-fifth of Alaska's revenue. Per capita, Alaska receives more federal funding than any other state in the country, an honor held since 1999. That means much of Alaska's infrastructure is paid for by federal funds, not state funds. If you don't have much in the way of expenses, you don't need much in the way of additional revenue. As a result, the tax burden stays pretty low.

But wait!

The Last Frontier's tax perks get even better: The completion of the federally-funded Trans-Alaska pipeline and the establishment of Alaska as an energy center for gas and oil has proven to be a boon for residents. After the pipeline was completed, the state created a program called the Alaska Permanent Fund, that invests and distributes royalties from oil companies doing business in Alaska to residents. In 2008, the check was a record $3,269 per eligible resident. Eligible residents are those (including children) who have lived in Alaska for a full calendar year.