Developer of Liberty City building project arrested for fraud

Boston developer Dennis Stackhouse has been arrested on charges that he stole close to $1 million from a building project conceived to revitalize the Liberty City neighborhood, in the culmination of a two-year-long criminal investigation spurred by a Miami Herald report. Stackhouse pitched the $118 million Poinciana Park project to community leaders in 2003 as a biopharmaceutical complex which would be built with private money and backed by public bonds. The building never materialized, but in the meantime Stackhouse allegedly use double billings amounting to $600,000 and fake invoices totaling $391,000 for work that was never done. The arrest warrant, signed yesterday by a Miami-Dade County judge, said all the money that Stackhouse obtained illegally went to his personal accounts, political donations or towards unrelated projects.[Miami Herald]