Five relatives, one suite, an alleged $12.5 million scheme
Prosecutors allege a family used shell construction companies to hide payroll. Plus: the sales tax holiday starts Monday, July 20, and a four-petal pawpaw beats a parking lot.
Five relatives, one suite, an alleged $12.5 million scheme
Five members of an extended family are facing organized-scheme-to-defraud charges in what prosecutors describe as a $12.5 million construction fraud ring run out of West Palm Beach. The allegation, laid out in a 195-page Palm Beach County arrest affidavit, is that the family operated shell construction companies — several of them sharing one West Palm Beach office suite — to conceal payroll and avoid paying workers' compensation premiums, and that they ran unlicensed check-cashing businesses across South Florida alongside it. Several defendants also face workers' compensation fraud and unlicensed money-service-business charges. Investigators allege the enterprise ran from December 2024 through January 2026. All of this remains an allegation, no one has been convicted, and the investigation is still open. The next concrete answers will come through the court process and the continuing investigation.
Florida's back-to-school sales tax holiday starts Monday, July 20
Florida's annual Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday runs Monday, July 20 through Thursday, August 20, 2026 — a full month to stock up without paying sales tax. Clothing, footwear, wallets and qualifying bags priced $100 or less per item are tax-free, along with certain school supplies priced $50 or less per item and learning aids and jigsaw puzzles priced $30 or less. The biggest ticket: personal computers and certain computer accessories priced $1,500 or less qualify when purchased for noncommercial home or personal use. A few things to know before you shop: phones, video game consoles, rentals, and repairs are excluded, and purchases made at theme parks, public lodging establishments, or airports do not qualify.
A four-petal pawpaw beats a 200-space parking lot
FPL asked Juno Beach for permission to put roughly 200 employee parking spaces in part of a preserve containing four-petal pawpaw, and the proposal lost. It is a small story with an outsized moral, and it is the kind of thing that only happens when someone actually shows up to the meeting. File it under reasons to check the agenda before the vote rather than after it.
The sheriff's $1.2 billion budget is the county's biggest line item
County commissioners are grappling with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office budget, which now sits at $1.2 billion, and a proposal to split that budget off from everything else. However that split lands, it is the single biggest line item in county government, and how it is structured shapes what commissioners can and cannot do with the rest of the money. This is the sort of budget season decision that quietly sets the terms for years.
A Miami group gets the nod for Currie Park
A selection committee has picked the Miami-based Breakwater Hospitality Group for an indoor-outdoor, two-story restaurant at Currie Park, and the city's current procurement page lists the RFP as awarded to Breakwater. Currie Park has spent years as the north end's great unfinished sentence, a stretch of green that everyone agreed deserved more without agreeing on what. A two-story restaurant with public renderings is not the whole answer, but the selection is the first concrete step in a long while.
Pescatore Ristorante has closed on North Dixie Highway
Pescatore Ristorante has permanently closed at 1600 N. Dixie Highway after serving its final dinner June 30. The family-friendly Italian restaurant was known for seafood, artisan pizzas and homemade breads, and it announced the closure on social media July 1 without giving a reason. The restaurant occupied the former Mama Glida's site, tying this closing to a corner with a longer neighborhood dining history than one business name.
Clematis by Night is back on the waterfront Thursday
Clematis by Night runs Thursday, July 16, starting at 6 p.m. on the DowntownWPB Waterfront. The free weekly concert series has been a West Palm Beach tradition for more than three decades, which in South Florida terms makes it practically geological. The instructions have not changed in all that time: bring a lawn chair or a blanket, get there before the good spots go, and let the evening do the rest. If you have lived here a while and somehow never gone, this is the low-stakes summer week to fix that.
Colombian Night takes over the Treehouse rooftop
Colombian Night on the Rooftop lands at Treehouse Rooftop Bar on Saturday, July 25 at 7 p.m., with live music, cultural performances, Colombian-inspired food and the downtown skyline laid out below you. Put it on the calendar now if you want a Saturday that feels like a night out rather than a night in with the air conditioning cranked.