In early January 2025, when Republican Rosie Cordero-Stutz got sworn into office as Miami-Dade's new sheriff, it was an historic occasion: the first time in nearly 60 years that voters got to elect a top law enforcement leader.
The elected position had been abolished by voters in 1966, in rejection of the wholesale corruption that riddled the office. A statewide referendum approved in 2018 dictated that voters would again be required to elect its sheriff.
In a ceremony at Miami Dade College’s North Campus on
the morning of Jan. 7, 2025, the Miami-Dade County Police Department flag was lowered, and in its place the flag of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office rose.
The new sheriff would now have power to command a $1.2 billion budget.
Before administering Cordero-Stutz's oath of office in front of the live audience, former circuit court judge Israel Reyes remarked that he shared a “friendship of many years” with the newly elected sheriff.
“We served together with the Miami-Dade Police Department and you honor me by inviting a has-been judge to come up here and give you and administer the oath,” Reyes told Cordero-Stutz before the crowd and cameras. “So thank you, Rosie, for that. This day I will remember forever.”
Six months after the ceremony, Cordero-Stutz entered into a lucrative legal arrangement with her longtime friend that experts have called highly ethically questionable: Reyes would begin representing the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office on civil forfeiture cases — when the government seizes property from companies or individuals under the theory that the property was somehow used in a crime.
Reyes stands to profit tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, through the arrangement.
That’s because the sheriff’s office does not pay Reyes for his legal services, according to the agreement. Instead of paying him, Reyes can keep 30% of the assets seized by companies or individuals. And it doesn’t stop there. If the owner of the asset fights the seizure of property in court, Reyes can keep up to 35% of the assets, according to the contract.
The little-known agreement deeply alarms legal experts who say the sheriff’s office has created a pathway to allow a personal friend of the sheriff to profit from policing.
“ The conflict of interest strikes at the foundation of our justice system, of neutrality and of seeking justice,” Louis Rulli, a practice professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, told WLRN. “To be able to seize without charges and then to maximize recovery based on contingent fees, it's a very troublesome area.”
Civil asset forfeitures cases are considered “quasi-criminal,” a legal status that is neither criminal nor civil, but where constitutional protections for property owners are lower than for a criminal case. In criminal cases, a conviction needs to take place before assets are seized. During a civil forfeiture case, no conviction needs to occur. The government does not even have to press criminal charges against the owner of the property in question. The government has a much lower burden of proof for seizing property, a fact that has long alarmed civil libertarians.
" In civil forfeiture, we operate under this sort of fiction that the property has done wrong, not necessarily the individual, and therefore you don't need to convict the individual of criminal wrongdoing," explained Rulli.
Profiting from more than $45 million in seizures
Within two months of the contract being signed, Reyes on behalf of the Sheriff’s Office had seized over $45 million in bank accounts and inventory from local companies, potentially netting Reyes over $10 million in profit. Many of the companies are facing no criminal charges whatsoever; several are fighting the seizures in court.
Among the impacted companies is SH Americas, the largest distributor of Samsung phones in South Florida. Reyes and the Sheriff’s Office seized $42.5 million in company bank accounts, leaving it unable to make payroll and at risk of being forced to shut down, according to court filings. The company has not faced any charges of criminal wrongdoing.
Reyes alleged to the Miami-Dade circuit court that he had identified $2.6 billion in other assets from the parties that are forfeitable; he would make over $500 million if he succeeds in seizing those funds. However, the court ruled that those identified funds fell out of jurisdiction and are not currently seizable.
While Reyes and his law firm stand to collect up to 35% of the seized assets, the Sheriff’s Office would keep the remainder. Money from the seized bank accounts do not go to the state or county treasury; the money is reported as department revenue.
When Sheriff Cordero-Stutz came into office, the existing Miami-Dade Police Department reported $396,000 in revenue from fines and forfeitures. By the following fiscal year, with Reyes at the helm, that amount had risen to $9.6 million, a 2,325% increase. The money came from cases where the owners did not fight back on the seizure, or from cases in which the owners lost in court.
The potential for increasing revenues through civil asset forfeitures matters more than ever. The sheriff’s office is locked in a budget fight with the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners that shows no signs of slowing down in the coming years.
Researcher Rulli worries that sheriff’s offices and police departments nationwide have found a way to sidestep the regular budgeting process for raising revenue, something that typically happens in public conversations subjected to public scrutiny. The risk, he said, is that law enforcement can use the confiscated assets as a “slush fund” with little to no oversight.
“ State legislators ought to decide how money obtained through forfeiture should be used. They should not bypass the appropriations process, and that's what guarantees the public that the money's being well spent and it's for appropriate purposes,” he said.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
A Miami-Dade judge sees no problem
The lawsuit brought by the companies against the sheriff’s office alleges that by offering Reyes the ability to personally profit off of cases he brings on behalf of the sheriff’s office, that public trust is being breached and that a profit motive is driving decisions. The plaintiffs argue that since he stands to personally profit, Reyes is motivated to simply file the most lucrative cases, and to keep fighting them even when other attorneys would settle or drop the cases.
But the argument did not convince Miami Circuit Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan, who earlier this year denied a motion to disqualify Reyes from the forfeiture cases. She wrote that since the sheriff’s office signs off on a forfeiture before it is filed to the court, and that the sheriff’s office needs to directly approve settlements, that the office maintains “decision-making authority” needed to make the deal valid.
“It appears that [Reyes’ Law Firm] does not have the discretion to pick and choose which forfeitures will go forward, and therefore does not have the opportunity for example, to choose to bring only those forfeitures that are worth the most money and will result in the greatest profit to the firm,” wrote Orshan.
She wrote in the ruling that it appears to be the first time the question about contingency-based agreements for these kinds of cases come before a court in Florida. The companies are appealing the decision in Florida’s 3rd District Court.
Metro Dade police officer to lawyer
Reyes has a long history in law enforcement and in the legal profession. He became a Metro Dade police officer in 1980, and during the course of the murdering and crime spree that defined much of the decade he was a homicide detective. (It is not clear what Reyes meant by saying he and Cordero-Stutz “served together” at the Miami-Dade Police Department; He left the department in 1994, and Cordero-Stutz began in 1996). Reyes also worked investigations into organized crime rackets, including the case of Alberto San Pedro, who earned the nickname as “The Great Corrupter” of Hialeah before he was convicted of bribery, murder conspiracy and drug trafficking.
He later left the force and studied law at Nova Southeastern University and graduated in 1994. From there we worked as a personal injury attorney and in the Dade County State Attorney’s Office until 2002 when Republican Gov. Jeb Bush appointed him to a vacant seat in the county courthouse. The following year, Bush appointed him for a seat in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, where he served until 2011. From there, Reyes served as the deputy manager for Republican Connie Mack IV’s unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 2012.
He has also been active in committees that shape the legal profession in Florida. Republican Go. Rick Scott nominated Reyes in 2012 to serve as a member of the Judicial Nominating Commission for the Supreme Court, the body that plays a key role in shaping the make-up of the Florida Supreme Court. He served in the position through 2020.
Reyes currently serves on two influential committees in The Florida Bar: the Civil Procedure Rules Committee and the Standard Jury Instructions Committee for civil cases.
In 2018, Reyes started the company R.A. Asset Recovery LLC., state records show.
In August of 2024, Reyes gave $1,000 to the electoral campaign of Cordero-Stutz, campaign records show.
His law firm did not respond to a request for comment.
Bipartisan skepticism on civil forfeiture
For all his experience, the fact that a profit motive could be at play in the cases he has brought forward has critics calling foul.
Tim Sandefur, the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the libertarian-leaning Goldwater Institute, said the arrangement between Reyes and the sheriff’s office can “ undermine people's confidence in their government and make people see the government as a predator instead of a protector.”
“ When you have public resources that are devoted not to hunting down the worst criminals, but instead to hunting down those criminals whose prosecution will be most profitable for the government, that's a really perverse way to do government,” Sandefur told WLRN. “
In the U.S. Supreme Court, conservative justice Clarence Thomas has expressed a deep skepticism of civil asset forfeiture and suggested its constitutionality needs to be revisited by the courts. He lamented that seizures can take place without a criminal conviction, saying they most impact poor communities that have the fewest resources with which to fight the seizures in court.
“Partially as a result of this distinct legal regime, civil forfeiture has in recent decades become widespread and highly profitable. And because the law enforcement entity responsible for seizing the property often keeps it, these entities have strong incentives to pursue forfeiture,” he wrote in a 2022 statement. “This system — where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use — has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses.”
Academics and think tanks on the political left and right have long agreed that the way civil asset forfeiture is handled across the country is broken, and it presents many opportunities for corruption and abuse, including in South Florida.
In 2015, the Department of Justice forced the city of Bal Harbour to return $4 million the police department seized after prosecutors found the department was using the money as a slush fund to pay for first-class fights and other luxury items in what became a scandal that made national headlines.
Contracting with outside attorneys on a contingency-fee basis to handle civil asset forfeiture cases adds an additional wrinkle to the virtual consensus that something might need to change, said Rulli. The practice is banned in many states, including Georgia. Rulli said that’s because there has been recognition that if judges can be prosecuted and sentenced for running illegal kickback schemes based on the outcome of their cases, similar standards should hold for attorneys who represent the government in quasi-criminal cases.
“ Even lobbyists who lobby for change in the legislature are not permitted to accept fees on a contingent fee basis based upon the outcome of proposed legislation,” said Rulli. “We recognize in many areas that contingent fees serve a very important purpose for the public. But there are some areas where they just don't belong.”
