Real estate mogul an unlikely defendant

Real estate mogul an unlikely defendant
Posted on Wed, Oct. 10, 2007
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

A self-made New York transplant, David Margolis hardly seems like the
kind of guy who would get mixed up in a Cuba travel-ban caper.

The Fort Lauderdale real estate magnate has developed shopping centers
and office parks throughout South Florida over the past 30 years.

Yet a former tenant in one of his malls, Victor Vazquez, turned to him
last year to apply for a religious travel license to Cuba.

Now Vazquez, 40, and Margolis, 76, convicted of using bogus churches to
obtain a half-dozen such government permits, face possible prison time.

Among the dozens of people who wrote presentencing letters of support
for Margolis in the travel-ban case was Ray Ferrero Jr., Nova
Southeastern University's president.

''I was shocked to learn of David's involvement in this federal criminal
case,'' Ferrero wrote to U.S. District Judge Paul Huck. ``While I do not
know all of the facts and circumstances surrounding this case, I believe
anything that David did wrong was aberrant behavior on his part.''

Ferrero noted Margolis' charity work for Unicorn Children's Foundation,
a nonprofit dedicated to kids with neurological development disorders.

Another letter writer, Thomas C. Borisch, who works for the State
Department's Diplomatic Security Service, said Margolis was a major
supporter of Children Beating Cancer Foundation. The nonprofit helps
children in Cuba diagnosed with cancer, said Borisch, president of the
group. It sponsored a teenage girl to come to the United States in 2005
to receive a prosthetic leg and to visit Disney World, he said.

''His generosity has been a godsend to the ailing children of Cuba,''
Borisch wrote the judge.

As for Vazquez, there was one letter written on his behalf -- by his new
wife. ''We began a friendly relationship on one of his trips to Cuba
through a religious institution [church],'' Dayana Betancourt Mojena
wrote the judge.

Betancourt also cited Vazquez's involvement in the Children Beating
Cancer Foundation and other humanitarian activities in Cuba.

But Betancourt, who notes she married Vazquez in Havana on Oct. 27,
2006, makes no mention of her new husband's fraudulent past -- asking
only that the judge ``suspend your punishment.''

''It is in your hands for me to begin my life in your country with my
only family, my husband,'' she wrote, ``who will guide me during the
first few months in which I will be adapting to my new home far from my
loved ones.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_dade/story/267217.html