Member of Miami-Dade marijuana growhouse ring pleads guilty

An operative in the Santiesteban family’s alleged marijuana growhouse ring pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to kidnap a rival gang member, admitting he witnessed the man’s murder after the target stole 50 pounds of pot from the Miami-Dade clan.

Juan Felipe Castaneda’s plea agreement signaled a major development in the federal government’s crackdown on one of South Florida’s largest suspected growhouse operations. The ring is accused of running a distribution network stretching to New York.

Castaneda admitted he collaborated with alleged ringleader Derrick Santiesteban, accused shooter Norge Manduley and other members of the syndicate in June 2009, when they kidnapped Fidel Ruz Moreno after carjacking his Chevy van.

While en route to one of the Santiesteban’s grow houses in southwest Miami-Dade, Castaneda said in a court statement that he witnessed Manduley struggle with Ruz in the back of the van and then shoot him with a revolver.

After Ruz’s body was tossed out into the street, Castaneda said he saw Manduley “approach [the] prone body and repeatedly strike [Ruz] about the head with the butt of revolver that Manduley was wielding,” according to a statement filed with the plea agreement in Miami federal court.

Castaneda, a growhouse caretaker who fled the area last June when FBI agents arrested most of the 16 Santiesteban-syndicate members, is the first defendant to plead guilty to the main charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 1,000 marijuana plants. He also pleaded guilty to the kidnapping conspiracy.

In April, he faces a minimum-mandatory sentence of 10 years for the drug charge and up to life in prison for the kidnapping. His cooperation with prosecutors William Athas and Pat Sullivan could help them put pressure on other defendants to cut plea deals, according to the plea agreement.

The Ruz kidnapping and slaying — along with the possibility of a second, unrelated homicide, as well as suspicions that a Miami-Dade police officer was working with the Santiesteban clan — elevated the case beyond a routine pot-trafficking investigation.

At a detention hearing, Athas and Sullivan described Derrick Santiesteban, the lead defendant in the case, as the “mastermind behind the [Ruz] kidnapping.”

Investigators are zeroing in on a Miami-Dade officer who is suspected of playing a role in the family’s alleged drug syndicate. The officer, Roderick Silva, worked patrol in the Hammocks area of West Kendall. He was suspended with pay in June 2009, records show. He is the brother of another of the Santiestebans’ accused growhouse caretakers, David Silva.

Homicide detectives are also trying to determine whether an unsolved April 2006 slaying of a teenager in West Kendall is linked to an alleged Santiesteban growhouse in the area.

After going to visit a girlfriend near Southwest 172nd Terrace and 153rd Place, Angelo Lopera, 17, was attacked and shot multiple times. Investigators believe Lopera may have been killed because he was mistakenly suspected of visiting the neighborhood to steal harvested marijuana plants from the Santiestebans’ house at 17231 SW 153rd Pl., according to sources familiar with the probe.

The Santiesteban indictment was built around a dozen cooperating witnesses, most of whom were involved in the family’s alleged drug organization and have or will be separately charged, court records show.

The case was spearheaded by Miami-Dade police homicide detective Rich Raphael and FBI agent Michael Gualtieiri, working as part of a federal drug task force. Court records show the task force cultivated the witnesses, including two who were present during the Ruz kidnapping and eventually identified Manduley as the shooter.

Last July, Manduley was sentenced to 10 years in state prison after pleading guilty to weapons charges involving a domestic dispute with his ex-girlfriend in 2010. Manduley shot a .357 revolver twice into the air while threatening the ex-girlfriend and three other people.

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Facebook After Death: Who Owns Your Pages When You Die?

Most people can’t live without Facebook — but what happens to your Facebook page when you are no longer living? New Hampshire and other states are trying to figure that out.

State Rep. Peter Sullivan has introduced legislation to allow the executor of an estate control over the social networking pages of the dead. Last week, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 222-128 to give Sullivan more time to write an amendment that begins a study of the issue.

The bill proposed by Sullivan, a Democrat from Manchester, would allow control of someone’s Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts such as Gmail to be passed to the executor of their estate after death.

According to Sullivan, passage of his bill would bridge a gap in policies of social media sites regarding posthumous users. He said his bill would protect residents who have suffered loss.

“This would give the families a sense of closure, a sense of peace. It would help prevent this form of bullying that continues even after someone dies and nobody is really harmed by it.”

In an interview with WMUR, Sullivan tells the story of a young Canadian girl who committed suicide because of bullying. After she died the taunting continued on her Facebook page.

Read More About Teens Bullied On Facebook

“The family wasn’t able to do anything; they didn’t have access to her account.” Sullivan said. “They couldn’t go in and delete those comments, and they couldn’t take the page down completely.”

Five other states, including Oklahoma, Idaho, Rhode Island, Indiana and Connecticut, have established legislation regulating one’s digital presence after death. Rhode Island and Connecticut were first, but their bills were limited in scope to email accounts, excluding social networking sites.

According to opponents of Sullivan’s bill, contracts and provisions between the social media user and the site already lay out what happens to the page once the user passes. Opponents say Sullivan’s bill is unenforceable and incomplete. Some also say the issue would be better suited for federal law.

Ryan Kiesel, then a state legislator from Oklahoma, sponsored a similar bill in 2010 called the Digital Property Management After Death law. Though he supports states’ efforts to bring light to this issue, saying that it is a good way to get the conversation started, he also believes that this is a case that should eventually taken up by the federal government.

“Facebook and other online providers have changed their privacy policies to keep up with the times, but we still see a lot of flux within different sites like Facebook , Flickr, or Google, for example.” Keisel told ABC News. “The federal government should pass uniform laws to govern all digital assets because it is quite difficult for an estate to have to navigate endless numbers of digital policies postmortem.”

Kiesel, who now works as a civil rights activist, compared one’s digital legacy to the distribution of someone’s tangible assets after death.

Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics

“In Oklahoma, if you are administrator of the estate of a deceased person’s house and you find a box under their bed, you are well within your right to see what’s inside that box and if property is worth distributing, you should distribute it accordingly.” Kiesel told ABC News that the same idea goes for digital legacy.

Today marks the ninth Anniversary of the launch of Facebook, which currently has over 1 billion active users. That number, which has grown from just a million users in 2004, suggests there must be an enormous number of Facebook pages that must currently be occupied by deceased people.

Facebook has not completely ignored the growing number of deceased users. The site has created a function allowing Facebook pages to become memorials after they have died.

“Please use this form to request the memorialization of a deceased person’s account,” the site reads. “We extend our condolences and appreciate your patience and understanding throughout this process.”

Memorialization of a Facebook page, however, can only be done via online request. And the terms of service for Facebook’s say that it will not issue login and password information to family members of the deceased. The requestor must contact Facebook and request that the profile is taken down or memorialized.

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Carpet Countdown: Directors Turn Fans at DGAs

Filmmakers like Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow and Tom Hooper have provided inspiration for young up-and-comers, who hope to reach their level of greatness, but who do the Oscar-nominated directors look up to? Click the video to find out.

RELATED: Hot Looks of the Oscar Luncheon

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Woman in yoga pose awoken by man masturbating next to her, lawsuit claims

She was finishing her workout; he was just starting his.

An Upper West Side woman in post yoga, meditative bliss was allegedly rudely awoken by a maintenance worker masturbating next to her mat, a new lawsuit claims.

Keiko Herskovitz, a regular yogi at Equinox's Pure Yoga on W. 77th Street, was in the corpse pose called shavasana, laying down with her eyes closed on Jan. 26, when she "heard someone walk into the room."

At first Herskovitz, 55, ignored the noise until "she felt that there was a person next to her, and she opened her eyes to find a Pure Yoga employee, a maintenance associate, about two feet away, masturbating," the suit alleges.

Herskovitz "confronted the maintenance employee and asked, 'what are you doing?!'" she recalls in the court papers. The man, described as a 19-year-old, "quickly covered himself with a yoga blanket and ran out of the room," the documents allege.

Herskovitz immediately told a manager about the encounter. The supervisor allegedly dismissed the accusation and said that the man "was a good employee," court papers state.

The yogi, who'd been stretching at the studio weekly for three years, reported the incident to the police. She later received an email from the studio noting the seriousness of the incident, but management "has not reported the offender to the police or has taken any action against the offender," Herskovitz claims in the suit.

Her attorney, Eric Creizman, is hiring a private investigator to determine if the maintenance worker “has been involved in additional incidents.”

Herskovitz is suing Related Companies, which owns Equinox, for unspecified damages.

Neither the yoga studio nor Related returned calls for comment.

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VIP storage service for clothes comes to South Florida

There’s hardly any woman alive who doesn’t complain about a lack of closet space.

Now space-challenged South Floridians who want to store clothes in a climate-controlled atmosphere can turn to the same service used by celebrities and designers.

Garde Robe believes it has the answer. The New York-based company expanded into South Florida this month, aiming to serve savvy fashionistas, multiple home owners and globetrotters. Think of Garde Robe as both relief for closet crowding and a personal valet service that delivers your clothes anywhere in the world.

“The same way you have art storage and wine storage, we’re the only company dedicated to protecting and preserving the works of art that stay behind your closet doors,” said Doug Greenberg, vice president of sales and marketing for Garde Robe.

“You can’t just store clothing by wrapping them up and then bringing them back when you need them. It’s museum-quality storage.”

But that comes with a price. Garde Robe’s minimum calls for a one-year contract at $350 per month, which includes storage for 50 items, 10 shoe boxes and a box of accessories.

This service includes one local delivery per month in the area of the Garde Robe facility; customers pay for shipping to other cities.

“It’s very labor intensive to properly care for textiles, and you can’t do it on the cheap,” Greenberg said. “We know that prices some people out of the market. It’s not a mass-market service.”

Garde Robe’s customers include socialite Ivanka Trump and supermodel Iman. The company also provides storage for the collections of top-name fashion designers such as Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera.

The concept was started in New York in 2001 by Kim Akhtar, then Dan Rather’s publicist and a Flamenco dancer. Akhtar needed extra closet space and figured others in New York had the same problem.

But it wasn’t until 2008, when Garde Robe expanded beyond New York. The company now has facilities in Southern California and Tokyo, with plans for London as well.

The South Florida expansion largely was driven by requests from existing clientele in other markets who have second homes here or are regular visitors. Locally, Garde Robe partnered with Rey’s Cleaner’s, a Miami company that specializes in the cleaning and care of luxury goods and specialty items. Rey’s is a licensee of Garde Robe and owns 70 percent of the South Florida business.

The company will provide pick-up and delivery to serve customers from Key West to North Palm Beach County and west to Naples and Tampa. All clothes will be stored at Rey’s facility northeast of Miami International Airport.

For the Garde Robe loft, Rey’s created a separate room that is climate- and humidity-controlled by an air purification system. Temperature remains a constant 70 degrees.

Clothes are all wrapped in acid-free tissue paper and placed in separate protective white bags.

While Rey’s and other dry cleaners have stored clothes for customers before, this takes it to another level, said Angel Suarez, Rey’s owner.

“This serves as a complement to what we are already doing,” Suarez said.

Linda Haugland has been a Garde Robe customer since 2007 in New York and still pays $1,300 a month for the storage service there. But she recently moved to Coral Gables and is eager to give Garde Robe some additional black-tie dresses and her husband’s extra suits to store for her in South Florida.

“It makes life so much easier not clogging my closet with stuff I don’t need every day,” Haugland said. “It’s definitely become part of my life.”

Every customer who stores clothes with Garde Robe gets their own cyber closet.

A few mouse clicks, and the customer can view pictures and descriptions of every item in storage so they can easily select the clothes they need for that special event or vacation.

If the Garde Robe member is in the same city, clothes can be delivered in 24 hours or less. Garde Robe will also pack and ship a member’s items anywhere in the world.

That ease of service appeals to customers like Margaret Luce. When she divested of her New York apartment two years ago and moved to Jupiter full-time, she put her winter clothes and some of her formal clothes in Garde Robe’s New York facility. Now whenever Luce travels to New York or Los Angeles, she doesn’t have to worry about packing luggage. She simply goes into her virtual closet, picks out the items she wants and has them delivered directly to her hotel room.

“Being a model, I travel a lot and this is so effortless,” Luce said. “They’ll send it to you wherever you are in the world. Everything arrives nice and clean and pressed. It’s almost like shopping all over again because everything seems brand new.”

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Engineers: South Florida bridges rated ‘deficient’ remain safe to use

Of the hundreds of bridges both big and small in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, only a handful are rated as “structurally deficient” — and engineers say none is in danger of collapsing or being shut down.

But the cost of maintaining, repairing and replacing aging local bridges over the next decade and a half will easily mount into many hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when the state, county and local government agencies responsible for their upkeep face the prospect of tight or shrinking capital funding.

Piecing together the money for even the most crucial repairs is already a constant scramble, highway and public-works engineers say. Their agencies often make millions of dollars worth of repairs to old and obsolete bridges to eke out several more years of use from them, pushing the dreaded date of even costlier full replacement into an uncertain future.

The good news, they say, is that regular bridge inspections carried out by the Florida Department of Transportation mean government engineers have a good handle on maintenance and repair needs, and that surprises like the Rickenbacker Causeway’s Bear Cut Bridge, which had to be partly closed last month after an analysis found unusually rapid structural deterioration, are likely to remain infrequent.

“We’re very proactive to make sure our investment in infrastructure is maintained,” said Gus Pego, FDOT district secretary in Miami.

Still, some of the already-known needs are daunting.

For instance, Miami-Dade public works engineers say they expect to have to replace all 12 bridges, including two drawbridges, on the historic Venetian Causeway, built in the 1920s. The rough cost projection is $110 million, although they are about to embark on a study with FDOT to determine the precise scope and timing of work. Most of the cost, they hope, will be covered by federal grant money.

And that’s after the county spent about $9 million in 2011 to repair spalling and reinforce the concrete pilings supporting some of the Venetian’s bridges.

Dade: $450 million

Miami-Dade, which owns and maintains 206 bridges, roughly projects the cost of rehabilitating or replacing them over the next 10 to 20 years at more than $450 million, though the its engineers caution that the estimate also includes a “wish list” of noncritical work.

Those figures, which include the Venetian, encompass only a portion of the bridges across the county, many of which are owned and maintained by FDOT or municipalities.

Aside from the westbound half of the Bear Cut Bridge, 10 bridges in Miami-Dade are rated by FDOT as structurally deficient, a label that covers a range of issues, including structural deterioration but also some purely functional elements like narrow lanes or inadequate sidewalks.

Bridges on the list include the Miami River drawbridges at Southwest First Street and at Miami Avenue, and the Broad Causeway bridge at that road’s eastern end.

13 Broward spans

In Broward, 13 bridges have the same rating, including the Sunrise Boulevard bridge over the Middle River in Fort Lauderdale.

The details that earn the structurally deficient classification are unavailable because, to protect security, inspection reports are exempt from review under the state’s public-records law.

Each bridge receives a “sufficiency rating” that specifies its overall condition. A sufficiency rating below a certain level means a bridge must be repaired within six years or, in the case of bridges determined to be dangerous, shut down or weight-restricted. None of the Miami-Dade or Broward bridges besides Bear Cut scores at those lowest levels.

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Take-Two delays launch of Grand Theft Auto V video game

(Reuters) – Take-Two Interactive Software Inc said on Thursday it has pushed back the launch of the latest game from its hit “Grand Theft Auto” franchise to September 17 from its previously announced release window of spring 2013.

Shares of Take-Two were down six percent at $ 12.31 in early afternoon trading on the Nasdaq.

The delay was to allow Take-Two’s Rockstar Games studio, which develops “Grand Theft Auto” games, additional development time, the video game company said.

“Grand Theft Auto V” will be released worldwide for Microsoft Corp‘s Xbox and Sony Corp‘s PlayStation3 game consoles on September 17, the company said.

The action-adventure game lets players complete criminal missions in urban settings. The franchise’s last title “Grand Theft Auto IV” has sold over 25 million units since its release in 2008.

Grand Theft Auto V is set in a fictional city inspired by present-day Southern California.

The delayed launch pushes earnings from Grand Theft Auto V sales from June to September, Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said. The new title of the massively popular franchise has the potential to rake in close to $ 1 billion in retail sales and sell 15 to 20 million units, according to Bhatia.

“It adds to their development cost and it’s launching closer to what we think is going to be a period where new consoles will be coming out and there will be more competition from other titles,” Bhatia said.

The video game industry has been struggling to cope with flagging sales over the last year. Analysts say consumers are holding back from buying hardware and software as they wait for rumored next-generation versions of Sony Corp’s PlayStation and Microsoft Corp’s Xbox, expected later this year.

The delay could mean Take-Two is possibly creating a “cross-generation” title that could work on current and next-generation consoles, said analyst Mike Hickey of National Alliance Capital Markets.

“Remember, Xbox signed an exclusive deal with Rockstar at the beginning of the prior cycle for episodic content, and Sony provided exclusive resources for the completion of Grand Theft Auto IV,” Hickey said.

(Reporting by Malathi Nayak in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler and Alden Bentley)

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Destiny's Child Rocks Super Bowl Halftime Show with Beyonce

After weeks of speculation, the moment fans have been waiting for finally arrived when Destiny's Child accompanied Beyonce on stage during her Super Bowl XLVII Halftime Show.

PICS: Stars Flock to Super Bowl XLVII

The Superdome erupted at Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams' entrance when they accompanied Beyonce for their classic hits Bootyliscious, Independent Women and Single Ladies.

Prior to Kelly and Michelle's cameo, Beyonce belted out hits such as Love on Top and Crazy in Love.

VIDEO: Go Inside the Super Bowl's Hottest Parties

Beyonce's voice came through loud and clear over the background music, leaving no doubt as to whether or not she was singing live.

Destiny's Child's Super Bowl reunion comes after the release of their new album, Love Songs, which is a collection of the trio's most romantic tracks over the years, in addition to new songs like Nuclear.

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Deadly deserts

Ralph Peters

Violence in Allah’s name in northern Africa won’t end in my lifetime — and probably not in yours. The core question is: To what extent can the savagery be contained?

From the Atlantic coastline to the Suez Canal, struggling governments, impoverished populations and frankly backward societies struggle to find paths to modernization and to compete in a ruthless global economy. Religious fanatics for whom progress is a betrayal of faith hope to block development.

Still, if the only conflict was between Islamist terrorists and those who want civilized lives, the situation could be managed over time. But that struggle forms only one level in a layer cake of clashing visions and outright civil wars bedeviling a vast region. Much larger than Europe, the zone of contention encompasses the Maghreb, the countries touching the Mediterranean, and the Sahel, the bitterly poor states stretching down across desert wastes to the African savannah.

AFP/Getty Images

Figthers of the Islamic group Ansar Dine

The Sahel is the front line not only between the world of Islam and Christian-animist cultures in Africa’s heart, but between Arabs and light-skinned tribes in the north, and blacks to the south. No area in the world so explicitly illustrates the late, great Samuel Huntington’s concept of “the clash of civilizations.”

If racial and religious differences were not challenge enough, in the Maghreb the factions and interest groups are still more complicated. We view Egypt as locked in a contest between Islamists and “our guys,” Egyptians seeking new freedoms. But Egypt’s identity struggle is far more complex, involving social liberals, moderate Muslims, stern conservative Muslims (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and outright fanatics. The military forms another constituency, while the business community defends its selfish interests. Then there are the supporters of the old Mubarak regime, the masses of educated-but-unemployed youth and the bitterly poor peasants.

Atop all that there’s the question of whether the values cherished by Arab societies can adapt to a globalized world.

The path to Egypt’s future will not be smooth — yet Egypt’s chances are better than those of many of its neighbors. Consider a few key countries in the region:

Mali

Viva la France! (Never thought I’d write that in The Post.) Contrary to a lot of media nonsense, the effective French intervention in Mali demonstrates that not every military response to Islamist terror has to become another Afghanistan: The French are welcome.

As extremists invariably do, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its allies rapidly alienated their fellow Muslims — after hijacking a local uprising. The local version of Islam is far more humane and tolerant than the Wahhabi cult imposed by Islamist fanatics. To the foreign extremists, the Malian love of Sufi mysticism, ancient shrines and their own centuries of religious scholarship are all hateful — as is the Malian genius for music that’s pleased listeners around the world.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Digital Debrief: David Klock getting down to Business

David R. Klock took the helm of Florida International University’s College of Business as dean, on Oct. 1, after serving in a similar role at the University of Alabama-Birmingham’s School of Business.

A milkman’s son who earned a doctorate in finance, Klock’s career has spanned leadership positions in both academia and business.

Soon after he arrived at FIU, Klock began holding open forums for students, where he has laid out his priorities, including hiring more faculty members.

Eager to learn more about Klock, we sent him these questions, and he emailed his responses:

Q.You have an interesting background for an academician, in that you were chief executive and chairman of CompBenefits Corp. Please tell me about that entrepreneurial experience.

In 1980, while at the University of Central Florida, a former student asked my wife Phyllis and me to get involved in CompBenefits, a dental benefits company. It was barely a year old, with no full-time employees. We started as unpaid consultants. Our friends at the university thought we were crazy, but we saw potential.

By 1986, the company had grown substantially. My involvement as a consultant steadily increased, and in 1991, I resigned my position at UCF and went to work full-time as president of CompBenefits.

Just after I arrived in Atlanta, the chairman of the company told me he was selling the company. I said, “I just gave up my tenured position, and now you’re selling?” His response: “Oh, don’t worry, you and Phyllis will buy it. It’s $25 to $30 million, and you’ll find the money.” I thought he was joking, but sure enough, we did. When the deal was done, Phyllis and I were the only original shareholders left.

From there, the company took off. After several acquisitions, we went public in 1995. In 1998, with the company still thriving, the stock valuation hit a snag. Our original investment bankers came back to us and suggested we take the company private, which we did in 1999. We operated the company for six more years, growing with acquisitions, including Oral Health Services out of Miami and Vision Care Plan in Tampa, a new line of business for us. After five years as a private company, it was time to sell, and Humana emerged as the buyer in 2005. When the deal closed in 2006, we were providing benefits to just under 5 million members in 23 states, with over $350 million in revenue.

Q. You also have experience in the corporate world, serving as a director. Please tell me about that.

In addition to serving on the board of CompBenefits when I was chairman and CEO, I have served on several corporate boards. The first was Province Healthcare, a chain of rural hospitals based in Nashville. While I was dean of the business school at Cal Poly in Pomona, I was invited to be on the board of directors and chair the Special Litigation Committee of Cheesecake Factory. I’m now on the board of Mayer Electric, a $600+ million private company in electrical equipment distribution, based in Birmingham.

Q. Now that you are here, what are your academic goals at FIU’s College of Business?

Before I arrived at FIU, the college went through an intensive strategic planning process, and made a decision to focus on three thematic areas: healthcare, entrepreneurship and international business. Our primary mission is developing, nurturing and supporting world-class faculty dedicated to leading the institution in those themes.

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