5 January 1–7, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | that he’d “accidentally” claimed to be a police officer. Volusia County officials stated that they discovered documents indicating Fluty was working as a private investigator and may have been in the area in connection with an insurance case. He has pleaded not guilty; a trial date is pending. T Y R E E K H I L L Last year’s Dirty Dozen included Miami- Dade police officer Danny Torres, who hauled Miami Dolphins wideout Tyreek Hill out of his sports car outside of Hard Rock Stadium ahead of the Miami Dolphins’ 2024 home opener. Now the wide receiver will go down in history alongside Torres in the an- nals of local ignominy for his issues off the field. Even before Hill’s brutal, season-ending knee injury, it was a rough year for the man known as the Cheetah. Last April, the Sunny Isles Beach Police Department responded to a call about a domestic dispute at the Collins Avenue home of Hill and his wife, Keeta Vaccaro. Vaccaro’s mother told police that Hill had thrown her daughter’s laptop to the floor and taken their infant daughter out to a 35th-floor balcony. Footage of the incident later shared on social media showed Hill holding the baby. A day after the incident, Vaccaro filed for divorce. In a subsequent court filing, she alleged that Hill had been abusive to her on eight separate occasions over the course of their 17-month marriage, including while she was pregnant. Hill’s at- torney dismissed the allegations as “unsub- stantiated” and “untrue,” calling the court filing a “shakedown.” The NFL is reviewing the matter. overpaid the firm by, oh, about $5.7 million. Rather than raising a red flag, Cherfilus- McCormick allegedly loaned herself $6.2 mil- lion for a 2022 congressional run. In June 2024, after the error was discovered, the state asked for its money back. Trinity demurred. A House Ethics Committee report later deter- mined that the Broward congresswoman may have violated campaign-finance laws. Her 2026 challenger, Elijah Manley, called it “cor- ruption” (which prompted her to sue him for defamation). In November, a federal grand jury indicted Cherfilus-McCormick on charges of stealing federal disaster-relief funds and laundering them into her cam- paign. Investigators also say she dropped roughly $109,000 on what seems to be a Tiffany & Co. yellow diamond. “Disaster re- lief,” but make it fashun! C A R L O S D U A R T & T I N A V I D A L D U A R T Seven months after Gov. Ron DeSantis reap- pointed Carlos Duart to the Florida International University Board of Trustees and appointed his wife, Tina Vidal-Duart, to the Florida Atlantic University Board of Trustees, the couple’s consulting firm, CDR Companies, was one of many that rushed to help erect the controversial Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention facility in the Everglades. The remote tent city had barely opened for business in early July of 2025 when the Duarts’ names, and those of their fellow contractors, were plastered across the news. As state contractors at the 39-square-mile site hastened to mask logos and U.S. Department of Transportation registration numbers on their trucks in violation of state and federal regulations, the Duarts engineered their own digital disappearing act, quietly van- ishing from their own company websites. P A U L F L U T Y In 2020, Paul Fluty was honored as “Officer of the Year” by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office (formerly the Miami-Dade Police Department) for stopping criminals. Now, he’s accused of being one. Last September, only months after the sheriff’s office fired him for failing a drug test tied to a domestic violence case, the 39-year-old was arrested near Orlando for impersonating law enforce- ment. Police say he was essentially cosplaying as a cop, claiming to be a Miami-Dade officer working with the U.S. Marshals to search for a 13-year-old missing girl. “Google my name. I got officer of the year and everything,” he told Volusia County deputies before they whisked him off to jail. Following his arrest, Fluty told police he’d provided his old badge and cre- dentials “out of habit” and “by mistake,” and DIRTY DIRTY the DOZEN 2025 >> p6 U.S. House of Representatives photo Volusia County Sheriff’s Office screenshot Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images Source Images: Muscovy Duck; Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Boot; lucaspezata via pexels.com. Jeans; readymade via pexels.com
