Former school board honcho Lubby Navarro found herself swapping her office for house arrest after she was accused of using taxpayer money for personal splurges – including an exotic vacation and not one, but two fake pregnancy bellies. The ex-Miami-Dade School Board member, who lent her talents to the district since 2015, was nabbed on Thursday for allegedly swiping hundreds of thousands of dollars from the district's coffers, according to attorney's office.
Justice may not have been blind, but it wasn't deaf to the cries of outrage as Navarro, initially held on a whopping $2 million bonk, saw her fate turn yet again as her attorney Ben Kuehne convinced a judge to dial the bail down to a more palatable $100,000. "We are going to fight the charges," Kuehne affirmed to CBS News Miami, banking on an upcoming status hearing to clear her name.
This troubling saga unfolded when the school's top brass, after Navarro's abrupt exit, discovered that their P Cards – meant for the public good – were funding Navarro's personal whims, from lavish tech gadgets to wardrobe upgrades. State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, lifting the veil at a press conference, summed it up: Navarro is accused of lavishing over $92,000 of district dollars on herself, as Local10 reported.
No detail was too small in the accusations: the former vice chair apparently wasn't shy about dropping $9,000 for her own globe-trotting escapades, as well as a getaway to the Dominican Republic with her mother and a jaunt to Las Vegas with her then-beau. And those artificial baby bumps? Just two items on a shopping list that has left taxpayers and officials scratching their heads. Navarro's brush with the law came just a day before a new anti-lobbying law for elected officials took effect, raising eyebrows and questions about the timing of her departure.
