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The Florida Bar has opened an investigation into the homestead exemption fraud by Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors, an attorney and former president of the Coral Gables Bar Association.
After receiving a complaint from activist resident Jack Thompson, Bar Counsel Richard Coombs responded that they would look into the illegal homestead exemptions Fors claimed for years on a Little Havana condo he did not live in.
“Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention,” Coombs wrote Thompson on April 3. “The Florida Bar has opened up a case as the complainant and will investigate this matter.”
Thompson’s complaint is closed, Coombs said, because The Florida Bar filed its very own complaint. That seems interesting.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal homestead exemption
Fors owns a 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo at 1039 SW 5th Street in Miami and said he lived there for a few months before he left to college in Gainesville. He never lived there again and, in fact, voted in the city of Coral Gables — his voter’s registration was at his parents’ house — in 2013, 2015 and 2017. Those same years, however, he still had the homestead exemption on 5th Street.
His illegal homestead exemptions were first discovered by Ladra and exposed earlier this year.
But in January, after he filed to run for office and after Ladra started sniffing around — las malas lenguas say he was tipped off — Fors paid the county a total of $13,178.37 all at once for back taxes he got out of on the condo as well as interest and penalties for the years 2010 through 2017. Why not 2018?
But all of a sudden, it seems, he had an urgent need to pay that? Or is it because he is running for office and he knew it would come up that he tried to cheat taxpayers out of his fair share?
In fact, Fors decided not to tell me about the one-time lump sum payment he made back to the taxpayers he cheated when he and Ladra spoke on the phone about it a month later. Rather than say he had taken care of it, he stuck to the defense that he was allowed to have the homestead exemption even if he didn’t live there because he didn’t have one someplace else.
If he believed that, why did he pay the penalty? And if he paid the penalty, why didn’t he just say so? Was it because that would be admitting to being a scoundrel who tried to get away with stealing thousands of dollars from taxpayers?
Would he still be doing it if he hadn’t run for office?
Questions that hopefully the Bar investigation will ask Fors. But we won’t know the outcome before Tuesday’s election.

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There is likely to be a runoff in the Coral Gables commission race after Tuesday, where none of the four candidates are likely to pull away with more than 50% of the vote.
And when former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera is headed for round 2, as expected, he may be better prepared than whoever the other candidate is: Cabrera would head into Tuesday’s election with more cash on hand than any of the other three hopefuls.
The latest campaign finance reports filed Friday show that Cabrera and attorney Jorge L. Fors are practically neck and neck on the bankroll, with $129,470 for the former commissioner and $122,250 for the Jorgie-Come-Lately with the illegal homestead exemptions.
Read related: Development interests fund campaign for Raul Valdes-Fauli
Both have some development money in their latest reports. Cabrera got $7,000 from Armando Codina, who is building a 16-story luxury condo on Salzedo Street and $5,000 from Agave, developers of The Plaza on Ponce de Leon Boulevard (the old Spanish Village). Earlier, he reported $3,000 from a group of developers on South Bayshore Drive.
There is a huge difference between the fraction of development dollars in Cabrera’s bank and mayoral incumbent Raul Valdes-Fauli, who has tens of thousands in sneaky bundles from developers and development interests. Only a small percentage of Cabrera’s campaign funds are tied to development.
The developers came to him, Cabrera said, because they respect his position and vision for the city. “It’s about the fact that I’m accessible. I may not always agree with them, but I’m always going to tell them the truth,” he told Ladra.
And the former commissioner has far more contributions from non developers, including, notably, $1,000 from the political action committee of Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, $500 from former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and $300 from Gonzalo Sanabria, a Gables rabblerouser (and failed commission candidate) who was originally supporting another Carmen Olazabal in this race.
Fors has some development money, too, but fewer bundles. He has several maximum $1,000 gifts from seemingly separate real estate development and construction interests, including $2,000 from Allen Morris. He also got $1,000 check from former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers, who lost his own commission race two years ago and is still licking his wounds.
But Fors also has more money from outside of Coral Gables, including contributions from Miami Lakes Councilman Josh Dieguez and former Miami Lakes Councilman Nelson Hernandez, who lost his bid for mayor. Most of Fors’ outside money is from lawyers in Miami, which might be expected of the past president of the Coral Gables Bar Association.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera’s commission race advantage — others are unelectable
Former interim city manager and compulsive liar Carmen Olazabal doesn’t have much development or attorney money because, well, she doesn’t have much financial support at all. Olazabal is a distant third with a total of $42,098 collected, much of it from relatives in Puerto Rico.
But both Olazabal and Fors are burning through their cash faster — spending $111,330 and $40,222, respectively — than Cabrera, who has spent less than $70K as of April 4.
That means that Olazabal has about $2,000 to spend between now and Tuesday. Fors has $11,000 or so and Cabrera has about $60,000.
If he keeps the trend, Ralph might have a nice nut to hit the ground running on April 10.

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