When Champlain Towers South arrived here from the waterfront 40 years ago in the former Miami suburb of Surfside, the new condo shone with promise.

It’s the first chic high-rise condo in the small town, and it solidified the community as a gathering place for the rich and famous like Frank Sinatra, who hung out along the road from where the skyscraper was located. smugglers to a circle of traveling relatives: it’s about landing in their little piece of paradise.

But even before developers sold the 136 condos to their first owners, the structure had broken down and the structure was about to rot as soon as it was founded, according to a USA TODAY survey.

USA TODAY set out to conduct a thorough assessment of the forces in the paintings of the construction that collapsed on June 24, killing 98 people. Journalists reviewed thousands of pages of documents, adding deeds, inspection records and minutes of homeowners’ associations. interviewed dozens of people, adding cash laundering and engineering experts and citizens who took part in the construction from its birth in 1981 until its murderous end in 2021.

The report shows for the first time that early condo sales show telltale symptoms of a cash laundering program. Experts say shortcuts in the structure accompanied the cash laundering. At Champlain South, engineers detected a poorly designed pool and poorly constructed aid columns. it has also meant that some first-time buyers didn’t live in the condo or didn’t care about its long-term maintenance.

“The moment we’re talking about is when Miami suddenly came out of the ashes. So how do you rush to meet demand? He has cut out the corners. Build dozens of houses, apartment complexes and skyscrapers in Miami leading as the Medellin cartel’s main cash launderer.

The report also shows that troubling evidence of the building’s degradation gave the impression of being pre-existing and ignored for longer than expected. Residents saw a flood in the garage in 1981, the year the tower opened. By 1996, they were already repairing the concrete on the roof of the garage. In 2016, as the structure of a new condo next door rumbled, a Champlain South resident was rocked by a treadmill.

Records of owner arrangements and interviews with citizens show that those problems were solved in isolation, a number of likely minor problems that no one connected until a 2018 engineering report detailed the structural errors that researchers are examining lately whether they contributed to the collapse.

Even as engineers, in spite of everything, alerted citizens to design flaws that were causing chronic water intrusions and expanding damage to concrete, the arguments and delays related to the mandatory upstay had nothing to do with safety, but with the burden and inconvenience of solving problems. In the final years of construction, homeowners voted to stop a solution to the “deep” deterioration of concrete near the pool so they can leave the pool open all summer, according to a 2020 engineering document. construction that, according to witnesses, collapsed.

As construction maintenance was postponed and disorder continued to emerge, the luxury designs and high-end finishes of the condo have become boring and dilapidated.

A USA TODAY investigation of 40 years of sales of genuine properties in Surfside shows Champlain’s fortune falling from one of the region’s most expensive to a tarnished windfall.

The 2021 Champlain South sale came in May when a couple paid $2. 8 million for a four-bedroom penthouse in the 40-year-old building, but in contrast, a three-bedroom apartment in condos next to Eighty Seven Park, two one-year-olds, sold for $9 million, more than 3 times as much.

On how construction has declined and fallen since its inception, “timing is key,” said Nicholas Griffin, who wrote an e-book about cocaine, race riots and the refugee crisis in Miami in 1980.

“It all happens precisely at the moment they make the deal with Surfside,” Griffin said. “So you may believe that fair inspections of potential construction errors would be at the bottom of the list. “

He stopped.

“Seeds were planted that took years to grow and then collapse. “

The land where Champlain South once stood stuck developers from the early days of the oceanfront condo boom in the United States.

For most of the 1970s, the entire block that would become Champlain South was a fenced well about 12 feet deep. The developers had purchased the 3-star Coronado hotel, demolished it, and announced a 12-story condo to take its place.

But this assignment never saw the gentleness of the day. According to a 1973 Miami Herald article, developers were unable to have a dispute with Miami-Dade County over improvements to the sewer formula. Instead, a hut sprouted into the well, where young people “smoked grass and hung out,” said Ray Lovado, 54. , who grew up two blocks from the site.

The assets were sold in 1978 and in 1979, but eventually came into the hands of developer Nathan Reiber and his spouse Nathan Goldlist and associates.

They revived big plans for the venue, projects that made the eyes of Surfside’s leaders shine.

“It’s going to be effective in the coffers to keep the tax burden on citizens low,” said Mitchell Kinzer, who was the mayor of Surfside at the time of the Champlain South structure. Champlain South and its nearly the same twin, Champlain North, inflated taxes reached $35 million in 1982, generating more than enough to cover plans to raise city workers’ wages by 5%.

But Reiber faced tax spades in Canadá. Su lawyer, Stanley Levine, had been accused of attempting to bribe a local official in Florida as part of an earlier assignment; and a structural contractor hired to paint at the Champlain South assignment was subsequently forced to relinquish his license after violations. The architect’s license had been suspended in Florida after the panel structures he had designed collapsed during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

Reiber, Levine and others who led the construction’s progress have since died, but attempts to succeed with their relatives were unsuccessful.

Thousands of pages of deeds and loan documents reveal that in the 24 months following opening, at least 62 sales topped $9. 5 million showed ancient symptoms of laundering.

To use cash from selling drugs, cartels will first need to ensure that cash cannot be traced back to its illegal origin. of sales or rentals, a plausibly valid source of cash that can be safely deposited or spent. Mortgage repayments also create a valid source of income.

That’s why hidden customer identities, coin sales, hidden resources of personal loan coins, bills higher than those of condominiums, and provoked loan repayments are perceived as red flags for money laundering.

Not all of those transactions are illegal. In 1981, money laundering was not a crime. This replaced in 1986 with the Money Laundering Control Act, which prohibits monetary transactions with cash from certain crimes.

In Champlain South and North, red flags were common: buyers bought games through shell corporations in countries like Panama and the Netherlands Antilles, either of which is known for laundering drug coins through limited public corporations. as well as more than two hundred other offshore corporations, according to the Panama Papers. Multiple sales referred to the sale of coins and overpayments.

“Shell corporations, spot transactions, quick sales, buyers, tax haven corporations as owners, hidden favorable owners, all the bells and whistles of suspicious transactions that compliance officials would recognize today in a minute in New York,” said Ken Rijock, a Miami member of the Money Crimes Representative and former banking attorney who, in the 1980s, laundered cash for Colombian cocaine cartels.

In addition, records show that a fund controlled through Reiber’s lawyer lent millions to other people who bought condos from Reiber and his partner.

If they engaged in cash laundering in sales, experts said, chances are the developers were also cutting prices for the structure and anywhere else they could simply increase their profits.

“You sought to establish genuine property as temporarily as you might imagine because cash was flowing,” said Valdes, the former Medellin cash launderer. “We can buy any building inspector at any time. There were no strict codes. There were no money laundering laws.

Levine used an accept as true account with an unidentified cash source to disburse more than $3 million in high-interest loans to first-time buyers of South Champlain in its first two years and at least $1. 4 million to Champlain North, an awakening. Said Charles Intriago, one of the country’s most accepted as true witty columnists about miami’s war on money laundering in the 1980s.

“If the main actors of a construction are involved in corrupt activities, they are most likely concerned about corruption at each and every level of it. This includes from the moment the user buys it, to the construction, the finishing touch and there’s going to be the temptation to take shortcuts, and Miami — and it is — fertile soil for that,” the former federal prosecutor said. This Surfside Tower is no exception. “

Levine’s loan terms can be exhausting. Interest rates even exceeded the average of 16% through banks in 1981. Twelve-month repayments for six-figure loans were not uncommon in Champlain South. But loans were popular: even Reiber’s business wife in Champlain. , Goldlist, borrowed $150,000, records show.

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Another sign of money laundering: In its early days, Champlain South had the highest market costs for condos, even though condos with more amenities sold for less.

For example, in 1980, Triton Tower condos advertised everything Champlain presented, and something else: a place to eat and two pools. In Miami Beach, a better known neighborhood with more prestige.

There, the sale price of a penthouse is $121,000; $137,000 for a sumptuous two bedroom apartment. In Champlain, a penthouse sold in 1981 for $216,800.

Despite the exorbitant prices, the first buyers flocked from Brooklyn, Denver, New Jersey and Canada, where Reiber and Goldlist had businesses and ties.

When Marely Fuquen overpaid for her two-bedroom fifth-floor apartment in 1982, she not only signed up for the ranks of foreign and foreign buyers paying money for condominiums, but she placed the Cocaine Cartel in Cali, Colombia, in downtown Champlain Sur.

The mother of 4 and the mistress of José Santacruz Londono, the cartel’s biggest cash launderer.

Working from a network of Panamanian banks and shell companies, his Luxembourg-based monetary assistants moved from street drug sales in the United States to Panamanian banks, and from there, to European and Colombian accounts and companies.

Fuquen told the others that he feared for his children if something bothered him, and he did everything.

In 1989, Fuquen disappeared. The DEA investigating the drug lord believed Santacruz had ordered his murder.

Appraised checks for his condo in South Champlain continued to arrive for up to 3 months after the government arrested Santacruz’s European money laundering team and froze millions of dollars of his non-public fortune. a broader seizure of the cartel’s assets.

“When it comes to dirty cash, it leeps into sales. Something has to give way, so the charges are inflated. This increases the charge of the unit,” Intriago said. They have to get that cash back somehow, and it’s simple to disguise. Who the hell is going to know?”

Rebecca Posner was one of the first to settle in Champlain South. His father bought the condo in 1981, he said, so he could spend time with his children when they took breaks in northern residential schools.

Posner liked the apartment. He enjoyed his neighbors, “all very kind,” he recalls. I had only one complaint: from day one, each and every time it rained, the garage was flooded.

“We had to get the cars out,” Posner said.

From the garage floor to the attic roof, possible structure options and some deviations from the plans have made the condos hotter and, in some cases, more vulnerable.

Near the pool terrace, ornamental planters have been added in thousands of additional books. A hot tub is not in the structural drawings; a full hot tub can weigh 6,000 pounds.

The domain is already vulnerable. The pool platform had been designed as a flat surface, a “big mistake” known decades later in a 2018 report through the condo board’s engineering consultant. Without a slope, water did not flow, but accumulated under the ground, compromising the concrete structure. .

Under the floor, a transfer in the parking lot design removed some structures. A garage column used 80% of its capacity for concrete slabs on top of it, said Abi Aghayere, a professor of structural engineering at Drexel University. to manage any other weight, adding people, furniture and appliances.

The New York Times and the Miami Herald first reported some errors and adjustments to the concrete columns and slabs. Aghayere conducted an independent analysis.

There are too many internal metal rebar in some columns, the engineer said, which can weaken the supports by leaving too little room for concrete. And although building codes at the time required a minimum of 1. 5 inches of concrete siding for slabs, Aghayere discovered plans that required less than an inch of protective siding.

“Providing less concrete policy than required for rebar on the garage slab, especially since the slab had no waterproofing membrane and was exposed to seawater infiltration, may have led to corrosion,” Aghayere said.

This would create a vicious cycle: As the internal metal rods of the concrete corrode, they expand, he said, cracks would form, creating openings for more seawater to corrode even more rods and weaken more concrete. stamina resistance, with the risk of “a sudden rupture” and collapse.

There is no explanation, and in some cases, no very important records, settings, and components are known. The entire penthouse was an addition to the original plans, actually creating a 13th floor. The documents show gaps in the specifications about the types of columns to be performed. use and the amount of metal they need.

However, marketing images show a slender oblong column on the giant attic balcony where the plans of the other floors on the same domain required more powerful square columns. Feature for the attic.

The external columns of the attic balcony were exposed to corrosive saline air and rain. The structure codes required a two-inch-thick concrete coating for those and all other external columns. Aghayere said he did not discover cladding plans when the structural plans and records were provided. through the city.

No one was seen at that time.

“You can believe in a municipal government as small as Surfside, which doesn’t have many degrees of guarantees,” Intriago said. “Not doing inspections in this Florida domain is as common as eating breakfast in the morning. “

For millionaire drug trafficker Pedro “Peggy” Rosello, Champlain South presented a safe haven on the radar where cocaine trafficking, Ferraris and indoor spa nights abounded.

He got there in 1988, at the height of Miami’s drug war. Money poured in, he said, and the luxury condo on Collins Avenue, a hub where kingpins were partying, out of sight of undercover cops.

From the outside, he said, the construction seduces. The interior: discreet.

“All the attention was on South Beach, so I can walk into an elevator knowing that no one will catch up with me,” Rosello told USA TODAY from his crime cell. He is serving time for cocaine in a Miami federal criminal until February 2022.

In 1991, Rosello, a “cocaine cowboy,” said he was weeks away from buying the two-bedroom fifth-floor condo he rented under a pseudonym in Champlain South. Those plans were replaced when the government indiced him for his role in Miami’s largest cocaine. ring.

“Who knows? If I had bought it, my son, ‘little Peter,’ might have been the one living there at the time of the collapse,” she said. “But in the end, the construction fell, just like our old cocaine empire. “

In 1996, according to the leases of the work, the contractors were already performing the primary maintenance of the concrete of the roof of the garage, the lower part of the poorly designed pool cover, only 15 years after the opening of the construction and already the concrete at its base collapsing.

No one knew at the time, but Champlain South was also flowing at a rate of about 2 millimeters per year in the 1990s, according to a 2020 examination of ancient satellite knowledge through Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment in Florida. International University. USA TODAY first reported on exam hours after the construction collapse.

Cracked walls or movable foundations would possibly be indications that the collapse affected the stability of a structure, experts say. Residents of the building would possibly have noticed changes.

“Were there adjustments in the construction?Cracks in the walls, in the floor?The floors are not level, the elements slide on the tables?Matthys Levy of “Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail,” USA TODAY said in June. “It would imply that construction was moving. “

In 2001 and 2015, a Champlain resident filed a lawsuit against the same concrete contractors that the condominium’s board of trustees hired for maintenance in 1996, alleging that cracks in the building’s outer skin had allowed water to enter their units.

Meanwhile, the Champlain South towers were already sliding into convenience compared to the surrounding buildings. Champlain South had ruled the market when it opened, but in 1996, USA TODAY research on genuine property sales showed that the average development value of a Champlain North or South Condo is consistent with square foot, compared to $129 for the other Collins Avenue condos in Surfside and Miami Beach.

By 2001, the hole had widened: $143 consistent with square foot in Champlain North and South to $193 consistent with square foot in other oceanfront condos in the region.

No matter the price, Champlain’s condos featured the two most important outlets in South Florida: they were on the sand. Framed windows with sea view.

And while the costs would possibly have reflected the building’s age, those that cut costs also allowed homeowners to gain more space, said Peter Zalewski, a Southwest Florida condo consultant.

“Maybe it wasn’t the construction they wanted,” he said. “But pound for pound,” he said, a reduced fare and proximity to sand and surf made Champlain desirable: “It’s the square meter rather than the price. “

Steve Rosenthal agrees. In 2001, he launched the acquisition of a two-bedroom house overlooking the bay.

“It was a gift from heaven. It was the position to buy, well, until it wasn’t,” said Rosenthal, who for about 20 years saw puddles of water that looked like the full moon and high tide in the parking lot, as well as meandering cracks through balcony floors.

“They showed up, you complained, and nothing was ever done. They were growing, and it was the same pattern,” he said, echoing another eleventh-floor resident, who in 2019 complained to the condo board that a piece of concrete fell from the balcony over his.

Balconies are an eternal weak link. Nationally, prior to the Champlain collapse, there were still two of the 26 injuries involving structural condominium failures between 2015-2021 balconies.

“People used to come into my space with a stick and prick the ceiling of the balcony, but they never painted themselves,” Rosenthal said.

For a brief period, when Rosenthal saw the cracks spread, Florida law required more thorough inspections that could have detected larger disturbances in South Champlain, but in 2010, the Florida Legislature repealed the 2008 law that required condominium associations to inspect and evaluate each other’s maintenance wishes. and every five years.

That would be in 2018 before engineers looked at the construction design and then because Miami-Dade County takes the rare step of requiring an inspection when construction turns 40.

But at that moment, time is running out.

It took Steve Rosenthal to throw it from a treadmill to a believer.

In 2016, there was talk of the tremors and sharp tremors that shook the declining degrees of Champlain South, but for citizens living above the 3rd floor, the vibrations of building a new skyscraper nearby sounded like a myth. Rosenthal had felt nothing in his seventh-floor unit.

Then, running to the first-floor gym, Rosenthal said, “I felt it for myself. The blows literally shook the gym. His feet slipped off the treadmill, however, he took care to avoid falling. “

“I had to get going. “

The structure of Eighty Seven Park, a condominium complex taller and sumptuous than Champlain Towers South, sparked more than just court cases of tremors, it made an incessant noise. Relentless dust. Polystyrene pieces floating in the communal pool.

The 18-story construction opened in 2016 on the land without delay south of its aging neighbor, just meters from Miami Beach’s city limit.

Construction vibration isn’t an unusual enough challenge for developers to take detailed photographs of nearby buildings, experts say, so they can then be compared to whether their activities possibly caused cracks, settlements or other damage.

Champlain South deserve to have been inspected before Eighty Seven Park began and after it was completed, Aghayere said. These pre- and post-construction studies deserve to have noticed all the existing cracks and new cracks that shaped the construction.

“The vibrations of the structure deserve to have been monitored by a seismograph to verify that they were not excessive,” he said.

The developers refused to provide the documents and vibration investigations to USA TODAY.

Seven of the 33 lawsuits filed through the families of those who suffered the cave on the Eighty Seven Park developers’ list as defendants, alleging that they failed to take precautions to protect Champlain South during construction.

Miami Beach code enforcement officials were called to the structure site 94 times during the five years of the condominium project, according to USA TODAY. Records show that approximately 62% of those court cases were noise-related; Among others, the citizens of Champlain South were involved in vibrations damaging the decaying building. As a result, the contractor and the progression company paid the city $26,500 in fines.

But no matter how many times the citizens of South Champlain have complained, nothing has been done to address the concerns of their building, records show. Emails between citizens, the arrangement of the condo and the city of Surfside document this.

Board member Mara Chouela wrote an email to Ross Prieto, then in the Surfside building, in January 2019 with considerations about the building’s structural integrity.

“We are involved in the design next to Surfside being too close,” he wrote. We were “digging too close to our assets and have considerations about the design of our building. “

He attached two photographs of structure devices just above the wall of the pool terrace and asked if those from Surfside could come and check the situation.

Prieto replied 28 minutes later: “I have nothing to check. “

USA TODAY contacted Chouela and 26 other former Champlain South board members who served as early as 1997 through a combination of calls, emails and handwritten letters. Chouela hung up a journalist. Others responded or needed to speak for this story.

Jay Miller, who bought his third-floor unit in 2018, tried his own in old Champlain South.

“Unlike many new buildings, there were giant rooms, hallways and very spacious apartments, so I just had to renovate it,” Miller told USA TODAY. “But apparently, there were underlying structural problems that no one had noticed. alarm about “.

The retired journalism professor noticed that it wasn’t until he moved in that he saw red flags like paint that came off the roof and normal flooding.

“The garage is a general mess,” he said. Sometimes when there’s a lot of water in the basement, you literally have to wdd the water to get to your car. When I first moved, it was wrong, but no. “Terrible, but after that it kept getting worse.

Condo owners, many of whom live on steady incomes, are known for their furious opposition to even fixed minimum appraisals, and Champlain South is no exception. Board members are continually under pressure from the need for costs.

He wrote one in 2016, “My biggest fear is overseeing long-term projects and making sure cash can be saved.

Champlain’s board members and activists were not without education: the treasurer, a CPA, board applicants, and activists included a corporate structure president, a chemical engineer, a residential asset manager, a genuine real estate specialist, and a former banking executive. $151,000 a year for maintenance between 2018 and 2020, Champlain South board members would possibly have an idea of their $706,000 in reserve.

That’s a fraction of the more than $15 million needed through 2021 to fix urgent maintenance and protection hazards like concrete cracking, but, Eric M said. Glazer, a Florida condo lawyer, “The truth is that condos with even $700,000 are rare. Some don’t have dollars in their reserve accounts.

The age of the Surfside structure and its effects on maintenance and prices were important to some. Before Miller bought the condo from him, a company by name asked Surfside city officials if the condo’s 40-year electrical and structural certification had been completed. no. The sale has taken place.

Four months later, in October 2018, an engineering report by Morabito Consultants detailed a litany of board considerations, including: Concrete-reinforced iron rods were exposed and deteriorated in the parking area. Walls. The previous maintenance of the concrete failed.

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And experts pointed out the original design flaw underlying the pool terrace area. There, a pressureman wants to break the concrete slab of the pool platform, they wrote, so that a water-resistant “membrane” can be installed; failure to do so would result in an “exponential expansion” of the existing deterioration of concrete.

When Prieto, who is guilty of building Surfside, won Morabito’s report, he took no action, just as he did with considerations about Eighty Seven Park, records show. condition. “

In the months following the 2018 Morabito report, the minutes of the condominium’s board of trustees have almost nothing of the alarming language of the findings.

Council members assured the resident involved that they were in the process of deciding on a contractor for the restoration of the concrete, that in August 2019.

Nearly a year later, an engineer who had been asked to go through construction in search of mandatory maintenance informed the condominium manager that he had “knocked down the concrete edges of the yards that appeared to emanate (sic) from the fall. “As of July 2020, the contract for the recovery of concrete and waterproofing paints has not yet been finalized, however, the city council had intensified other redemption efforts.

Nearly 19 months after Morabito Consultants indexed “abundant” cracks in the parking lot’s concrete columns, beams and walls, the board voted to approve a contract with the engineering firm to oversee the repair work.

They needed millions. ” We started saving at least five years ago,” concluded a slideshow by the board of trustees on finance.

When the chessboard peeked out, Champlain South arrived in its final hour.

In the early morning of June 24, the ground rumbled. The walls were shaking, the windows were broken.

Was it an earthquake? Rosenthal had no idea. As the executives fell to the ground, the 72-year-old moved quickly, through a rush of adrenaline and fear.

He grabbed a gym bag and put on what he thought he had for a few days: two shorts, two shirts, and 6 pairs of socks and underwear. road.

He thought he would escape the ruined construction at the back of the staircase, but rescuers had to pull him off his balcony.

“I opened my door in the dark that night to see the sky under my feet. “

Contribution: Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, U. S. reporter, and Wendy Rhodes, Palm Beach Post reporter

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