Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam by Elizabeth Parker, Mark Ebner Read Free Book Online

$50,000 he still needed to pay off his restitution, once he had exhausted all the money he had on hand. (This represented approximately 23 points on his actual loan of $50,000.) At this point, Mike just wanted it over with and agreed to meet Erik the next day at his bank—the Regions Bank in the same building as Entin’s office in Fort Lauderdale.
    The following day—ominously enough, April 1—Mike met with Erik and turned over the $91,000 he had given to and immediately taken back from Dalia, a cashier’s check in the amount of $30,000, and an additional $20,000 in cash. Erik in turn had his bank issue a second cashier’s checkin the amount of $191,000 made out to Michael Entin. Then, with Dalia in tow, he went upstairs to take the new check to Michael Entin. Entin asked Dalia to step outside, refusing to speak in front of her. Once they were alone, Entin presented Mike with signed documents that a lawyer had just faxed over on behalf of Erik—whom Mike had just left downstairs—to execute a lien on Mike’s house as security on the loan. (Mike had already investigated taking equity out of his house for the restitution, but his credit was so bad he couldn’t even get money out of a home he owned outright.) Entin stated he wasn’t a real estate attorney and had no experience with property law—especially where a $250,000 townhouse was meant to secure a $50,000 mortgage—and he wanted no part of it. He referred Mike to another attorney who could handle the transaction. Mike literally begged him to reconsider, by now blinded to everything but the few precious millimeters separating him from his freedom, but to no avail. Entin was washing his hands of this entire circus.
    By now, Mike was out roughly $240,000—his hundred that first went to Dalia, the ninety he put in at the lawyer’s office, and the fifty he came up with to get Erik to loan him the rest—not to mention his attorney’s fees. He was tapped. Unlike his attorney, Mike didn’t have the luxury of washing his hands of this deal. This was his life. He called the new lawyer, Melissa Donoho, and hired her sight unseen, telling her he would meet her when he brought the check. And since he now had a cashier’s check made out to someone who refused to take it, he called Erik, who suggested they meet there at the Regions Bank the following day and get a new check issued under the appropriate name.
    But first, at seven forty-five the next morning, Mike went out to walk the dogs as he usually did, only to arrive home to discover two Boynton Beach police officers on his front porch. They said they’d had complaints of shouting and loud noises coming from his townhouse. (Mike can’t remember, but he thinks he and Dalia may have argued about the money, and the police report by an Officer Naulty says they admitted as much.) Questioned separately from Dalia, Mike soon learned more details: someone had called the police anonymously and reported screaming and yelling coming from the apartment; it had been going on since the previous evening. The maletenant, a suspected drug dealer, had at one point dragged a female, wearing only a bathrobe, back inside by her hair. There was currently banging coming from inside the apartment, and they feared for the occupants’ safety. Mike was petrified, since an arrest for domestic battery would automatically return him to prison. But Dalia adamantly denied all of the above, even when she was separated from Mike and encouraged by the police.
    Still visibly rattled, Mike met that afternoon with Erik Tal again at his bank. There Erik explained to Mike that the teller informed him that there had been too much suspicious activity on the account involving six-figure amounts, and they were freezing his account. They tried a second account at Washington Mutual and Erik claims he was told that account had been seized for suspected fraudulent activity also. Erik told Mike to call him in a couple of days and they’d get the whole thing