South Florida has embraced this résumé before. Jewelry, mansions, yachts, parties, a fleet of insanely expensive cars.

And free-flowing millions. No matter if the money comes from suspicious origins.

Down in the lower reaches of the Florida peninsula, ostentatious wealth tends to trump suspicion. Bluster helps. Scott Rothstein offered plenty with his tough talk, ankle holster and real cops providing personal security.

Rothstein has become South Florida's latest rewrite of The Great Gatsby. Or maybe just a vulgar, flashy reprise of financier David Paul. When Rothstein was still a law student, Paul was using gobs of suspicious money, looted from CenTrust Bank, to ingratiate himself into Miami society.

Rothstein, ousted by his Fort Lauderdale law firm last week after hundreds of millions disappeared from investor accounts, hung a cheesy portrait of Al Pacino as the Godfather on his office wall. (Right actor, wrong character. Should have been Scarface). Paul, displaying better taste, used bank money to buy a $13.2 million Rubens.

In 1988 (the year Rothstein got his law degree), David Paul flew six chefs from France to cater a party at his $10 million La Gorce Island mansion in Miami Beach, where he entertained unctuous pols and civic leaders. Two decades later, Rothstein became famous for extravagant political fundraisers at his Isla Bahia mansion in Fort Lauderdale. Photos in Rothstein's office indicated how people like Gov. Charlie Crist dearly appreciated Rothstein's generosity. Even hinky money, poured into political coffers, buys a lot of respect hereabouts.

John Rothchild, author of Up for Grabs, his perfectly titled chronicle of a state regularly seduced by scoundrels and charlatans, recognized Rothstein as another in South Florida's ignominious parade of high-living, highly suspect characters, beloved as long as the money lasts.

Rothstein, up until last week, was treated like royalty, though not quite as royally as Mohammed al-Fassi, the Saudi prince who wasn't, as it turned out, an actual Saudi prince. Al-Fassi basked amid the unskeptical fawning of local pols and business leaders after he and his mighty entourage swept into South Florida on a mad buying spree, grabbing houses, cars, jewelry, a Star Island mansion, while running up a $1,475,516.34 bill at the Diplomat Hotel. The ``prince'' skipped town in 1981 as the king of the deadbeats.

``It's the history of Miami and the whole region,'' said Rothchild, who noted that Al Capone bought a lot of respect while he was living the good life on Star Island. Other infamous mobsters in the 1940s also knew how to spread money around.

Rothstein's short sojourn to Morocco last week before slouching home (in a Gulfstream jet) to face federal prosecutors recalled another disgraced world traveler, Henry Gherman, dubbed a ``beacon of light'' by The Miami Herald for his charitable ways. Gherman was also admired for zany extravagances, like dipping his daughter into gourmet chocolate on her 30th birthday.

But in 1988, someone noticed that the investment advisor had wowed Miami with his clients' money.

Daddy Bonbon took off, an international fugitive with $4.7 million in his suitcase, before getting nabbed in Japan.

The late 1980s also undid the reputation of Alberto Duque, Miami's supposed coffee magnate who was living well enough off fraudulent loans to afford two jets, two yachts, a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, a Miami Beach mansion, a joint in the Cricket Club. Turns out the magnate was all talk and no coffee.

``The essence never changes,'' said Rothchild, who's also bemused by contemporary characters like Dennis Stackhouse (now facing fraud charges), who so bedazzled local pols with (not really) his money that they never thought to Google his credentials. Rothchild has considered a sequel to Up for Grabs, but he worries that the modern scoundrels are too much like our old scoundrels.

Maybe the Great Rothstein was born 20 years too late. By now, he just seems redundant.

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