R i g h t a r d i a: Attorney General Pam Bondi: Wink, wink and look the other way

Former Fox legal analyst Pam Bondi is already shilling for the man

Andrew Bennett Spark, was the Assistant Attorney General, Tampa Economic Crimes. Rightardia has taken some excerpts from a letter he wrote before he resigned as a state's attorney.

"I have been reading articles concerning the controversies swirling around the Attorney General’s Office with respect to the forced resignations of June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards (from whom I took over day-to-day handling of the ProVest investigation), and the employment of Joe Jacquot with Lender Processing Services, one of the companies at the heart of the foreclosure robo-signing
issues. . .

(T)he people of the State of Florida are entitled to fair and honest government, independent of personal connections and powerful interests, and I have decided to speak out.

Former Director of Economic Crimes Mary Leontakianakos now works for foreclosure law firm Marshall Watson. Joe Jacquot is not the only high-ranking recent member of the Attorney General’s Office to now be working with a company which has been the subject of one of our foreclosure investigations.

Mary Leontakianakos, who was Director of Economic Crimes until approximately January 3 of this year has, according to The Florida Bar, taken a job at foreclosure firm Marshall Watson.

Leontakianakos was centrally involved in the foreclosure investigations while leading our Division, including the investigation of Marshall Watson:

It appears that Watson and/or Leontakianakos have been secreting her employment from the public. By using a personal email address as her contact email address rather than the Marshall Watson email address suffix MarshallWatson.com.

Leontakianakos has been able to avoid search functions which would reveal her affiliation. It is through the use of email suffixes that one may search the Florida Bar’s database for former employees of the foreclosure firms under investigation.

In addition, Watson has taken down the portion of his website showing the attorneys in the firm; it appears to be the only portion of his website that is inaccessible from elsewhere on the firm’s website (interestingly enough, Watson’s own attorney profile on that portion of the website is easily found directly from a Google search, and so does Caryn Graham’s, but there’s none for Leontakianakos).

As has been widely reported, the Attorney General’s Office entered into a settlement with Marshall Watson in March of this year . . . Paragraph 4.1 of the agreement requires Marshall Watson to name a liaison to the Attorney General’s Office. Is Mary Leontakianakos that liaison? I do not know.

However, Leontakianakos’ address on The Florida Bar website is listed as Fort Lauderdale, and yet a search of the website of the Broward County Clerk of Court reveals that she has not appeared as an attorney in a lawsuit in Broward County – ever.

If Leontakianakos is that liaison, would she have been switching sides during the course of a controversy, Rule 4-1.9 of The Florida Bar states:"

[a] lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter shall not thereafter:

(a) represent another person in the same or a substantially related matter in which that person’s interests are materially adverse to the interests of the former client unless the former client gives informed consent.

"Of course, the Economic Crimes Division acts in a parens patriae role as a representative of the people of the State of Florida.

Consent of the people of the state cannot meaningfully be given in such a situation – and judging by the reaction of so many of people in the state the past few weeks since the Clarkson/Edwards/Jacquot story broke, it is safe to say such consent by the people would not be given even if it meaningfully could be given."

It clear that there is a conflict of interest when the state of Florida lets its attorneys, who were prosecuting the mortgage industry, move over to companies they were investigating.

Rightardia suspects that June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards were fired so there work could be swept under the rug. The US Attorneys need to come in an take a look if Pam Bondi is not up to the task of protecting Floridians from unscrupulous mortgage lenders.