The southeast corner of SW 10th and FAU Research Park Boulevard sat as a state land grant for decades. Restricted use. Research and development tied to FAU’s north campus. That was the deal Florida cut when the parcel transferred.
FAU never committed. Half-assed the obligation, then walked away from the interchange plan entirely. The city was left holding land with a use restriction and no partner.
People’s Trust Insurance came in. When I asked City Hall how an insurance company satisfied “research and development,” the answer was that People’s Trust had their own inspectors. Cutting edge.
Staff knew it was weak sauce. They were boxed in by a partner who walked. I don’t fault them for the workaround. I fault the framing.
A mile east on 10th, at the corner of Dixie, another piece of Deerfield real estate was running its own story.
Domani Motors, 70 SW 10th Street
At one time, Mohamed “Michael” Ghanem, CEO Used Car Manager of Domani Motors—formerly Foreign Cars Continental—operated out of 70 SW 10th, on the corner of 10th and Dixie. Bentleys, Ferraris, Porsches.
Speaking of Porsches.
Late 90s, give or take. As I recall it, a lawsuit was filed against the Ghanem operation alleging the following: a yellow Porsche came in for a new rear quarter panel after a T-bone collision. The shop salvaged used parts off another sled — Guards Red — painted them yellow, slapped them on, and sent the car home. It rattled. The owner took it to Champion, where it was put on a lift, and the hidden underside painted bright red.
The customer paid for new. She got salvaged.
That’s the Ghanem way.
The 2002 federal racketeering conviction was built on exactly this kind of work.
Just at scale.
Except Michael could not legally run it. He was convicted of federal racketeering in November 2002 — first-degree felonies built on an insurance scam at the family auto repair shops. A felon cannot hold a Florida dealer’s license. So, Domani was incorporated and licensed in his wife Darlene’s name.
Darlene was beautiful inside and out. Smart as a whip. Always nice to me. Not sure what she saw in Michael. She passed a handful of years ago from cancer. During her demise, Ghanem posted her picture at the court room, where she looked very ill, with a title of something along the lines of “god is great.”
She was the legal owner. He was, on paper, a salesman.
Over the years, Ghanem’s suggested he attended MIT and Cal Tech, funny for a guy that didn’t finish high school (Darlene told me this).
Don’t shit where you eat is the rule. Michael done shate where he ate.
In June 2015, ATF served warrants at Michael’s Boca house, at Abojo’s house at 1320 Royal Palm Road, at Domani Motors, and on Michael’s 65-foot yacht, the Enigma. Twenty-three firearms came out of Abojo’s place. Half were loaded. Two suitcases of ammunition. Michael told agents he bought the weapons expecting his civil rights would be restored. He admitted they had not been.
According to Ghanem, he put his house on the market for $12M. Except it was listed at $10M. It didn’t sell. While he sat in jail pulling no income — and while Darlene torched what was left of the cash — the house went to foreclosure. He owed $5M. Short sale for $3M. I believe the IRS 1099’s you for the difference.
How do I know the real number? Ghanem rolls up to Starbucks in a stunningly beautiful $400K Metro Blue Roller, Sotheby’s flyer in hand, listing price printed right there — $2M south of his story.
Broke enough to lose the house. Flush enough for the Rolls. Math’s not mathing.
Yet another fish tale.
That’s the federal gun-possession case that sent him to prison.
Darlene, listed on paper as the owner of Domani, told reporters she was already divorcing him before the raid. Her quote, on the record: “Is my husband an idiot? Yes, he’s an idiot.”
She owned the building. She owned the dealership. She owned the inventory. He was inside.
She sold the Enigma. She sold his M35 deuce-and-a-half. She sold his prized Jaguar XK.
The old Foreign Cars Continental space at 70 SW 10th is now an online university.
Which is oddly appropriate. Through the years Michael has cited his studies at MIT and Caltech. If memory serves, he did not graduate high school.
His mechanic Leon was my neighbor in the Cove. Thursday and Friday nights, cars pulled up, stayed five minutes, drove off. People smoked dope on the front lawn back when that was still a felony. I worked with another Domani employee — Sparky, who Michael treated like dirt — to set up a controlled buy. BSO came through the door. Leon went out in cuffs.
I told him on the way to the cruiser that the reason he was going to jail was me.
Leon walked. The pat-down was bad. That’s BSO’s problem, not mine.
The Sharia Lease
Around ten+ years ago, Michael called me about the FAU parcel a mile west and said he was working with the vice president of Lamborghini Italy. He needed a Lambo dealership built there. He was, in his telling, the man to do it.
This was one lie. The Brightline story a few paragraphs from now is another.
What I learned later: the parcel was held by interests tied to one of the Gulf states. A representative came to town and met with then–City Manager Burgess Hanson. Two female staffers in the room. The visiting party wanted the lease rewritten under Sharia law.
Hanson, as I understand it, told them to take a flying leap.
* Burgess has a spine and a way about him. Yeah, Bill, I know … but I’m still on his team.
The Lambo dealership did not get built. There was never going to be a Lambo dealership. Michael was not working with the vice president of Lamborghini Italy. He was working with himself, on the phone, telling me a story.
Imagine that phone call, “This is the United States calling, are we reaching? We have a convicted felon on the line, Mr. Vice President of Lambo.”
Abojo, On His Own
Another Mensa candidate, Abbas “Abojo” Ghanem, kept the family’s good! name front and center.
November 9, 2023: Benjamin Bayless of Alabama sues Abbas Ghanem and Ghanem & Son Auto Concepts in Broward Circuit Court. Civil theft, conversion, unjust enrichment. The complaint alleges Abbas orchestrated a scam that took Bayless for $1,580,000 in exchange for no value. Case CACE-23-020927.
January 8, 2024: Abbas signs a $130,000 balloon promissory note to Donald Marshall — both as president of Ghanem & Son Auto Concept and individually. Eighteen percent interest. The note is itself a merger of two earlier notes due December 28, 2023 and January 8, 2024. Marshall had already been chasing this money before the new note was signed. Maturity: February 28, 2024.
April 3, 2024: Marshall sues. Case CACE-24-004592. The complaint alleges default on the note. Sixty-five dollars per diem accruing since March.
April 8, 2024 — five days after Marshall filed — Fort Lauderdale Police pick up Abbas at the Home Depot at 1000 NE 4th Avenue. Loss prevention had him on camera walking past every point of sale with a cart full of tools. Total: $449.25. Officer J. Bodine, FLPD #2089. State Attorney files the information May 6, 2024. F.S. 812.014(1)(a) and (2)(e). Petit theft.
Update: A few months ago, Michael Ghanem was arrested for shop lifting at the Pompano Lowes. $200 or so in tools.
A million-five-eighty civil theft suit. A six-figure note in default. A $449.25 cart of Home Depot tools.
The dollar amounts run the joke themselves.
The Brightline Story
During all this whackiness, Michael told me he had a deal with Brightline. The NW corner of 10th and Dixie — the same corner he was already operating on, maybe 500 feet across — was going to be a Brightline facility.
Burgess’s reaction, when I brought it to him: “What the fuck? Fourteen stories high? How do you park? Double-decker stack?”
There is no Brightline facility at 10th and Dixie. There was never going to be a Brightline facility at 10th and Dixie. Michael Ghanem does not often run into the truth in the same sentence.
What’s Coming
The FAU parcel is now slated for a Mario Caprini / MBA Development Partner. Hotel. Restaurant. Rooftop patio bar. People I trust at City Hall say Mario is solid. The project is moving.
Getting it to “moving” took years.
The site had zoning issues. The city issued two mulligans to keep the project alive. Approval to build a hotel on land originally restricted to research and development is not a clerical exercise — staff worked the file. The land-use designation, the height envelope, the parking ratios, the setbacks. Two passes through the system to get the entitlements right.
And of course, before Caryl’s Wet and Raw Fish Shack, aka The Bad Clam Bar, can close open on the roof, we need DEP approval (wink). Love Canal and all.
It wouldn’t be a story without old pissy pants, Dan Butt Hertz, complaining about MBA’s $250,000 deposit.
We want our money back, says the old inflatable fart cushion.
You see, returning that deposit blows up the timeline. The mulligans are in place. The entitlements are conditioned on the developer staying on the clock. Pull the deposit, the developer walks, the project goes back out to bid, and the corner sits empty for another half-decade waiting for the next partner to take a run at the same zoning fight.
Butt Hertz didn’t read the file. He showed up with a number and a complaint.
And imagine Karen Burner anywhere near a wet bar. Imagine the ecological hazard of her wet fish. Imagine the stack of empty boxes of wine.
The deposit stays where it is.
The Through-Line
A mile of SW 10th — from Research Park Boulevard at one end to Dixie at the other — has hosted a state land grant FAU never honored, an insurance company grandfathered into “research and development,” a federal racketeer running an exotic dealership at the Dixie corner, a Gulf-state representative who wanted a municipal lease under Sharia law, a Brightline facility that existed only inside Michael Ghanem’s mouth, a brother now sued for $1.58 million who got picked up at Home Depot with $449.25 in tools, and a hotel-and-restaurant project staff is fighting to keep on the rails against a loudmouth posturing about a deposit.
The corner has a history. The history is not a bug. The history is the record.
I just write it down.
