Feds may take Miami attorney’s house. They say he misappropriated $1.5 million
Law license, home and freedom comprise the triple shot of possible losses hanging over a Miami Lakes attorney accused of misappropriating $1.5 million of the $3 million clients entrusted to him.
The Florida Bar on Friday filed a petition for Rodolfo Blanco’s emergency suspension, a common move when an attorney faces misappropriating funds accusations or a federal indictment. Blanco, a Bar member since 1994, has until Dec. 22 to respond with why he shouldn’t be suspended.
Court documents filed by federal prosecutors sum up the case as Blanco being “charged with 11 counts of wire fraud and 11 counts of money laundering based on a scheme through which [Blanco] received several million dollars in individual and corporate investor funds that were directed into his attorney trust account, then diverted these funds to his own personal use” and lied to fund managers about where the money was.
A conviction would take away Blanco’s freedom. The case, investigated by FBI Miami and being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sterling M. Paulson and Sandra Demirci, is scheduled to begin Feb. 23 in Miami federal court in front of Judge Federico A. Moreno.
The online court docket doesn’t show a plea entered by Blanco. The Miami Herald has reached out to Blanco by phone and email, and emailed his lawyer, federal public defender Micki Bloom.
Should Blanco be convicted, prosecutors will go after his Miami Lakes home in the forfeiture phase. The indictment accuses Blanco of using $605,000 to buy a four-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1998-built, 2,076-square-foot house in the 14400 block of Northwest 88th Avenue.
Blanco lives there while free on $700,000 bond. Court documents say he petitioned to be allowed to go to Madrid Nov. 14-20 as a Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce delegate for the Americas Linkage to Spain 2025 “business mission.”
The court rejected that request.
State records and Blanco’s Florida Bar profile say Blanco ran RMB Consultants & Associates out of his home. The indictment says it was RMB’s trust account from which Blanco removed money that wasn’t his.
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Money in, money out?
Law firms keep at least two bank accounts. The money in the operating account takes care of payroll, bills, rent and other business costs. Among the uses of the other account, the trust account: a holding area for client money.
The indictment says after telling a financial consulting firm he would “securely maintain investor funds” for an investment fund’s individual and corporate investors, RMG’s trust account received over $3 million from the investors between September 2023 and December 2023.
And, the indictment says, as soon as it began coming in through July 2024, “Blanco diverted the investor funds from the (trust) account for his own personal benefit through a series of teller transfers, wire transfers and cash and teller withdrawals.”
On Nov. 13, 2023, two transfers from the trust account, for $305,000 and $300,000, were made “in connection with the purchase of a residence in Miami Lakes for Rodolfo Mario Blanco.
When clients asked about their money from January through April 2024, the indictment says, Blanco told clients “the funds in the account were being held for review by governmental agencies; the funds were being held by the bank for a bank compliance review; he was unable to move or transfer the funds; and the funds were actually still present in the account (when, in fact, the funds had been diverted out of the account).”
The Justice Department says Blanco shored up the alleged lies with “fabricated bank communications and falsified account screenshots.”
