Lubby Navarro kept asking for spending limit on district credit card to be upped. It was
In the year when former Miami-Dade School Board member Lubby Navarro is criminally accused of racking up $100,000 in taxpayer dollars on her district-issued credit cards, she was the only School Board member who got the district to raise the amount she could spend per month, including more than doubling her credit line three times in 2022, according to her arrest warrant.
Yet district staffers signed off on her credit card bills for 11 of 12 months that year, even authorizing additional spending. In June 2022, the district upped her monthly spending limit from $6,000, the standard for School Board members, to $12,300; in August, the district went further, upping her limit to $15,000. In fact, the district bumped up her credit line for 10 of the 12 months of 2022; the only two months Navarro kept to the $6,000 limit were July and October, the warrant states.
It was only when Navarro’s last expense report from December 2022 made its way to the district’s chief of staff in January 2023, a month after Navarro resigned from the School Board, that serious scrutiny began, her 98-page arrest warrant details.
What caught Jose Bueno’s eye? She spent $13,432.36 in December, the warrant says. And she shopped a lot at Walmart.
That led Bueno, the district’s chief of staff, and Ron Steiger, the district’s chief financial officer, to use Walmart’s Receipt Lookup tool on the retailer’s website. They discovered Navarro bought food, gift cards, clothes and bottles of wine on her district purchase card, known as a P-card — expenses not allowed by the district, according to the warrant.
Navarro, 49, is facing felony fraud and grand theft charges stemming from more than $100,000 prosecutors say she rang up on her two school district cards in 2022, much of that going to equipping a former boyfriend’s struggling restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, and taking him to Las Vegas, according to investigators. Among the items she bought on her district card, the warrant stipulates: two refrigerators, including a commercial one; a wine chiller; three coffee makers, including a pro espresso machine; and two smart TVs.
“She siphoned away resources meant for the good of our children,’’ Felix Jimenez, the county’s Inspector General, said in announcing Navarro’s arrest on Jan. 11, standing alongside State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.
Navarro’s attorney, Benedict Kuehne, issued a statement the day of Navarro’s arrest, declaring she is innocent of all charges. The former Miami-Dade School Board member spent two nights at the county jail last week, before being released on a $10,000 bond last Saturday. She made her first appearance in court on Wednesday, where she was fitted with an ankle bracelet and surrendered her passport.
Spending concerns prior to 2022
The warrant indicates Navarro had a history of purchases prior to 2022 that garnered notice from the school district.
The head of the district’s accounts payable department questioned her administrative assistant in December 2021 about two payments amounting to more than $1,130 she made with her district card to T-Mobile.
“I need to understand what they are for as utilities and telephone expenses are not allowed to be purchased using the P-card,” Eric Ojeda, the district’s director of accounts payable, wrote in a Dec. 1, 2021, email to Navarro’s then-administrative assistant Jaanelle Yee.
And Yee told investigators with the State Attorney’s Office and Office of Inspector General that the district’s accounts payable staff questioned Navarro’s spending throughout her nearly three-year tenure of working for her.
“On frequent occasions, Ms. Yee would receive emails from Accounts Payable questioning specific purchases made with Navarro’s P-card,” the investigators wrote in the warrant.
Investigators have receipts for the long list of items they say Navarro purchased on school cards to outfit her former boyfriend’s restaurant, the Shook Market in Fort Lauderdale, all dating from 2022. But, he told investigators, that she began to spend lavishly on him and his business — using credit and gift cards — soon after their relationship turned romantic in 2021.
READ MORE: Lubby Navarro spent lavishly on ex-boyfriend’s restaurant and him, investigators say
The restaurant owner, Mor David, told investigators he never saw which credit cards Navarro was using at the time. David declined to speak to the Herald when reached last week.
Series of steps to file expenses
Investigators in their warrant detail a puzzling set of back-and-forth steps Navarro would take with Yee, who did not respond to the Herald’s requests for comment, to prepare — and, investigators say, alter — expense reconciliation reports before they were submitted for district approval.
According to the warrant, Yee told investigators the following:
▪ Yee would download PDF statements from the website of JP Morgan, the bank that issued the district credit cards, and print them.
▪ Yee would manually fill out the expense worksheets for Navarro’s purchase and travel cards.
▪ Once done, Yee would email the handwritten worksheets and the corresponding PDF bank statements to Navarro for approval.
▪ Once Navarro reviewed and approved the worksheets and bank statements, she would email them back to Yee.
▪ Yee then would type out the previously handwritten amounts onto new worksheets and prepare a copy, along with the statements, and place them in a folder for Navarro to sign when she came into the office twice a month.
▪ Navarro would then return the signed forms back to Yee and Yee would sign them herself as the “preparer.” She would then scan and upload the forms into the electronic system for the accounts payable department.
▪ Yee would place the final signed forms into an office drawer.
Yee told investigators she did not know where the files went after Navarro resigned. She resigned at the end of December 2022, a day before a new state law went into effect prohibiting elected officials from working as lobbyists. At the time, Navarro was a registered lobbyist for the South Broward Hospital District, which includes Memorial Healthcare System hospitals in Hollywood, Pembroke Pines, Miramar and Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood. She earned just over $220,000 in that job in 2022, according to the hospital district, which on the day of her arrest placed her on unpaid administrative leave.
Yee also said Navarro never provided her with receipts or invoices for purchases she made with either the P-card or the travel card. Navarro racked up more than $9,000 on her taxpayer-funded travel card, taking her grandmother to Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic and taking her then-boyfriend, the restaurant owner, to Las Vegas, where they stayed at the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel, racking up $4,338.19 in charges for the three-day trip, according to the warrant.
Yee told investigators that she never looked at Navarro’s statements nor did she ever question her boss about any purchases, the warrant says.
Whenever accounts payable would send an email to Yee questioning the expense reports, Yee would forward the message to Navarro and wait for her instructions on how to respond, investigators said.
“Ms. Yee stated that her responses to Accounts Payable were ‘verbatim’ on what Navarro had told her,” the investigators wrote.
READ MORE: From refrigerators to 56 lemon pies — here’s what Lubby Navarro bought, investigators say
The response to Ojeda’s Dec. 1, 2021, email questioning the T-Mobile purchases was that they “were for equipment unrelated to telephone charges,” the investigators wrote.
“Ms. Yee confirmed that what she told Mr. Ojeda was what Navarro told her to respond with,” the warrant states.
It’s unclear if there were any more communications between Ojeda’s office and Yee or Navarro regarding that expense. Ojeda did not answer emailed questions from the Herald on the matter.
After investigators showed Yee several months of expense reports she had submitted to accounts payable, including bank statements, they showed her the original statements that came directly from JP Morgan.
“When comparing the bank statement she had submitted to the one presented to her, Ms. Yee noted the bank statements she uploaded were altered from the originals,” the investigators wrote.
She also confirmed that the bank statements she had emailed to Navarro were altered after her boss returned them to her.
Yee denied she was the one who altered any of the documentation, according to the investigators.
READ MORE: School Board reforms credit cards after ex-member accused of racking up $100K in expenses
During the nine-member School Board meeting Wednesday, the board voted unanimously to reform the way credit card expenses are audited for past and present board members.
School Board member Danny Espino blasted the district’s lack of oversight that allowed Navarro to get away with allegedly misusing her district-issued credit cards for so long.
“Without question this is a difficult conversation because it’s about failings, alleged personal failings by a former School Board member. But also failings because of a lack of internal controls,” Espino said, adding, “Forget red flags; red flares should’ve gone up.”
A WLRN reporter asked Superintendent Jose Dotres why no one seriously questioned Navarro’s spending until she left office. Dotres said he could not comment because of the criminal investigation.
“This would be difficult for me to go into and explain because it’s part of what they’re looking into,” Dotres said.
Navarro is expected to plead not guilty during her scheduled Feb. 9 court arraignment.
