Governor suspends El Portal councilman who is facing 63 criminal counts
A longtime councilman in the village of El Portal has been suspended from office without pay after his arrest earlier this month on charges of embezzling money from a law firm where he worked.
Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order last Thursday suspending Harold Mathis Jr. in response to the 63 counts against him, including felony charges of grand theft, forgery, and organized scheme to defraud.
“It is in the best interests of the residents of the City of El Portal, and the citizens of the State of Florida, that Harold Mathis, Jr. be immediately suspended from the public office which he now holds,” the executive order says.
The allegations against Mathis don’t relate to his position as an El Portal councilman — a title he held from 2006 until last week — but rather to his work as a paralegal for the Miami criminal defense firm Ratzan & Faccidomo.
Prosecutors say he stole at least $50,000 from the firm, where he worked for more than six years.
But the Miami Herald has learned that prosecutors are still reviewing Mathis’ financial dealings with the village and trying to determine if there were any other victims in addition to the law firm. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a press release announcing the charges that the investigation into Mathis was ongoing.
Norman Powell, the village attorney for El Portal, told the Herald after a council meeting last week that the village had cooperated with requests for documents from the state attorney’s office, though he declined to specify what records the office had asked for.
The village denied the Herald’s public records request seeking copies of the state attorney’s document requests, saying the records are related to an “ongoing criminal investigation” and therefore exempt under the Sunshine Law.
Mathis and his attorney, Bijan Sebastian Parwaresch, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Mathis entered a written plea of not guilty last week, according to the online court docket. He is scheduled to appear for an arraignment hearing Jan. 10.
El Portal now has 90 days to hold an election to fill Mathis’ council seat. The election could go on the same ballot as the Democratic presidential primary on March 17, which would be 89 days after the governor’s executive order was issued.
Pairing the special election with the presidential primary could help El Portal keep costs down at a time when money is tight. The village is still waiting on $2 million in reimbursements for Hurricane Irma cleanup costs amid a federal review of “questionable” invoices that the village’s consultants submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. State officials have control of the funds but haven’t released them to the village while the FEMA review is ongoing.
At a village council meeting on Dec. 17, Mayor Claudia Cubillos noted that the village’s last special election — held this past April after Werner Dreher abruptly resigned — cost $16,000 to administer.
Cubillos said she hoped the village wouldn’t need to hold another special election to replace Mathis and added that, in the future, a village-wide referendum could be held to authorize the council to temporarily appoint a councilor until the next election when a seat becomes vacant.
Mathis became a councilman in 2006 and served until 2012, then took a two-year break before winning election in 2014.
Prosecutors allege that he used his law firm’s credit card for stays in hotels, rides around town and purchases at a Hialeah sex-toy shop called the Caliente Adult Superstore. An arrest warrant says additional credit card charges included “Royal Caribbean cruises, airline tickets, bar, grocery stores, and late night to early morning Uber and Lyft rides.”
Mathis is also accused of stealing $1,900 from a client who had made payments to the firm in cash, prosecutors said.
The investigation began when lawyers in the firm confronted Mathis in March about his poor job performance, prompting him to leave the office and quit. Later, as Mathis was clearing out his desk, lawyer Mycki Ratzan noticed a Capital One credit card statement with a portion cut out of it, according to an arrest warrant.
When Ratzan confronted him, Mathis “sobbed and confessed that he had used the law firm’s Capital One credit card for personal use and concealed his activity by altering the monthly statements,” the warrant said.
Mathis paid back $1,400 and even offered to deed over his home, but he made no more payments and the offer to turn over the house never materialized, according to court documents.
The investigation revealed that Mathis had misused the credit card — and presented doctored paper statements to his bosses — for more than two years. He also improperly listed himself as the account’s authorized manager, which is why neither Faccidomo nor Ratzan was ever alerted to the growing credit card balance, the warrant said.
At least 20 checks cut by Mathis also had forged signatures, prosecutors said.
Miami Herald staff writer David Ovalle contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 24, 2019 at 3:20 PM.