Joel Koeppel, with wife Carole, and comedian Robert Klein in Mar-a-Lago (Courtesy Davidoff Studios)

Despite an extensive Palm Beach clientele, big deal real estate attorney Joel Koeppel just filed for bankruptcy.

In paperwork delivered to the federal court in West Palm Beach, Koeppel claims to owe between $1 million and $10 million to 10 creditors, including Amex, Bank of America, Colonial Bank and the IRS.

He also owes about $1 million to his former law partners, who accused him in a lawsuit they recently won of ripping them off. Former partners Larry M. Mesches and Stuart Gottlieb claimed Koeppel wrote himself checks drawn from the firm’s accounts to pay for things like his membership to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Mesches and Gottlieb won $857,187, plus court and attorneys’ fees.

Koeppel filed for bankruptcy Oct. 28, the day he was supposed to be deposed by Mesches in legal action to force Koeppel to cough up the dough.

“We don’t know what his intentions are in filing for bankruptcy,” Mesches said, “whether it’s to delay or avoid paying us. But we’re now checking into whether he transferred assets, which could be illegal.”

Koeppel has been involved with many charitable and civic organizations over the years, including the Town of Palm Beach’s powerful Code Compliance Board. He couldn’t be reached at his offfice and didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

This is a cellphone picture of a hand sanitizer in the men’s room at the Fort Lauderdale headquarters of the lawfirm Rothstein, Rosenfeldt Adler. The bottle bears the firm’s logo and these words: “OUR CLIENTS come to court WITH CLEAN HANDS.” The nerve! Let’s see if founder Scott Rothstein, one of Gov. Charlie Crist’s sugar daddies, has clean hands when he answers to allegations that he ripped off $500 million from investors to fund his champagne-and-caviar lifestyle! Check out the latest on Rothstein here.

Surfer dude Miles McKnought-Smith is suing over a broken foot.

Boca tennis legend Chris Evert’s crumbling marriage to golf giant Greg Norman isn’t the only thing that’s occupying her time these days.

Evert is being sued in a Palm Beach County civil court by a friend of her children injured in an outing near Evert’s Boca Raton home.

According to Miami lawyer John Agnetti, several students from the chi-chi St. Andrews School in Boca, including two of Evert’s boys, were riding a golf cart and a dirt bike when a crash occurred.

Agnetti’s client, Pompano youth Miles McKnought-Smith, sustained a broken foot and sued.

“It seems that Ms. Evert’s home became a hangout with school children,” Agnetti said. “She has a lot of toys, and there wasn’t much adult supervision.”

Agnetti said he believes Evert wasn’t at home when the crash occurred.

Well-known area businessman Al Malnik, who made news in the aftermath of singer Michael Jackson’s death, is also named in the lawsuit. He is the godfather of Jackson’s youngest son, Blanket, and owns a property near Evert’s 5-acre, $2 million homestead in Horseshoe Acres, Boca Raton.

“It’s the craziest thing,” Malnik said. “I have a fence all around my property and nobody had permission to be there.”

Yet, said Malnik, his land is where the dirt-biking, 19-year-old McKnought-Smith somehow had an extra-close encounter with a golf cart allegedly operated by a minor, Ryan Logan, according to the paperwork.

Evert’s boys were also present, and both vehicles are owned by the multi-Grand Slam champion.

“It’s a little awkward for my client since all the kids are friends from school,” Agnetti said.

Before the incident, Agnetti said, McKnought-Smith was a rising star on the pro surfing circuit under a sponsorship contract and routinely ranked nationally in the top five. He’s now fallen off the rankings.

The defendants’ attorney, West Palm Beach’s David Bradley, said Evert asked him not to comment.

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Marx

The judge who married golf legend Greg Norman and tennis hall-of-famer Chris Evert said she’d never have thought the two could be apart.

Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Krista Marx said she spoke with the love birds two or three times before they were hitched last year.

“I was asked to marry them by the caterer, a friend of mine from kindergarten,” said Marx, who’s nearing the end of her third judicial term. “Chris and Greg came to the courthouse (downtown West Palm Beach) several times because one date was wrong on the marriage license.

“They looked absolutely crazy head over heels in love.”

Last week, however, Norman and Evert issued a statement through their respective staffs announcing they were separated after 15 months of marriage.

“It’s shocking, and very sad, too,” Marx said. “You always want to believe that love will prevail. The ceremony was very touching and beautiful.”

Evert and Norman's public wedding in The Bahamas (Page2Live archives/Splash News)

By ceremony, Marx doesn’t mean the top-of-the-hill wedding on Paradise Island near Nassau, Bahamas, that had as many paparazzi in the bushes as guests in the pews.

What Marx means is the private ceremony she officiated at Evert’s house in the Palm Beach Farms neighborhood of  Boca Raton five days earlier, on June 23, 2008.

That’s where Norman and Evert made it official before two dozen friends and family members. Evert’s assistant, Tami Starr, signed the license as a witness.

Marx wrote the entire ceremony herself, telling Norman and Evert: “The vows you’re about to pledge affirm, without equivocation, your mutual commitment to uphold within your marriage, love, friendship, loyalty, and trust.”

Click here to read the entire ceremony.

When Marx isn’t marrying people, meanwhile, she watches over hard core criminal trials, like the recent Dunbar Village rape.

Three years after former star weatherman Rob Lopicola quit WPTV-Channel 5 to “pursue other opportunities,” things haven’t worked out so well for the muscle-bound forecaster

Work out nut Lopicola (Courtesy Chelo Publishing)

How bad is it?

To find out, and the poll, look below or click (Read more…)

Cobra (Courtesy New Times)

With former Palm Beach County Commish Tony Masilotti rotting in a federal prison camp, a major player in the corruption scandal isn’t faring much better.

Fort Lauderdale-based investigator Bill Staubs, code name Cobra, who secretly gathered intelligence on Masilotti through barely legal means for 22 months in 2005-06, is facing financial and legal trouble.

Staubs is a larger-than-life character who’d meet reporters on the side of I-95 at midnight to discuss the Royal Palm Beach politician. But before he talked, he’d made no one meeting him by his SUV was wired.

The same Staubs now spends his weekends selling his belongings at the Swap Shop in Pompano Beach.

He tells this week’s Broward-Palm Beach New Times that, despite making $500,000 on tailing Masilotti on behalf of developers whom Masilotti was shaking down, he’s flat broke.

Staubs also awaits his trial on an illegal imprisonment charge in Central Florida. While trying to impress TV cameras in the early days of the made-for-Nancy-Grace disappearance of little Haleigh Cummings earlier this year,  Cobra apparently tossed the wrong guy.

“I just wanted to rule him out,” Staubs said the mishap.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

The saga of the Port St. Lucie High School biology teacher fired for moonlighting as a bikini-clad mate on a fishing charter has taken a sordid turn.

Tiffany Shepherd, 31, has set out to make money again by flaunting what God gave her.

This time, however, it’s not by serving stiff drinks to some amateur fisherman in her teeny number.

Shepherd’s a rising star in the porn industry. She plays either teacher types, or the wife-next-door.

“I’m not particularly proud of it. To be honest, I hate it,” Shepherd said. “I’m an educated woman, but I never thought it would come to this. No one gets brought up thinking they’ll be a floozy.”

The opening scene of a Leah Lust film (Courtesy pleasebangmywife.com)

Since her sacking made national news 15 months ago, Shepherd says she hasn’t been able to find a mainstream job.

Even at minimum wage.

Even after sending out 2,500 resumes, some as far as Idaho, some to prisons.

She’s lost custody of two of her three kids to her ex-husband. And she’s been evicted from two apartments.

Porn, she said, became her only avenue.

For more, and our poll, look below or click (Read more…)

Ryan

The sister of the 16-year-old Delray high schooler killed on her bike by a 94-year-old driver says Bettina Ryan’s death will not have been in vain.

Alix de la Moussaye, daughter of former Palm Beach society bad boy Jean de la Moussaye, tells me doctors harvested Bettina’s skin and will be able to treat up to 120 children who suffer from skin injuries, especially burns.

“The hospital just wrote us a letter saying how helpful Bettina’s gift was,” Alix de la Moussaye said.

Ryan was a bright student at St. Andrews School in Boca. She was weeks away from embarking on a behind-the-scenes “good student” tour of Washington, D.C. and the White House, when she was mowed down by Delray resident Louis Bellet’s SUV. He hasn’t been charged in connection with the Aug. 10 accident, which occurred as Bettina crossed Atlantic Avenue against a red light.

“She wanted to donate her organs,” Alix de la Moussaye said, “but some of them shut down after the crash and it didn’t happen. So they took her skin.”

Bettina was born into Palm Beach’s McMahon clan. Her grandmother is Betty McMahon, a socialite and author. Her mother, Francine Ryan, was once married to race-car driver Jean de la Moussaye.

Madoff

A talkative inmate at the Butner federal prison complex in North Carolina says $65 billion swindler Bernie Madoff told him he suffers from cancer and is close to punching his ticket.

Re-igniting rumors that the 71-year-old Ponzi schemer was fighting pancreatic cancer after he was arrested by the FBI late last year, the New York Post this morning claims a fellow inmate of Madoff says the ex-Wall Streeter is on “20 pills a day” and “not doing very well.”

“He talks about it all the time,” the unnamed inmate told the paper.

That may sound like good news to some, but don’t dance on the guy’s grave just yet!

One of several authors of recently released Madoff books, Madoff With The Money writer Jerry Oppenheimer, says an unnamed inmate can’t be all that trustworthy.

However, Oppenheimer adds, “cancer devastated the Madoff family.”

“It wouldn’t be a shocker if he were struck with cancer,” Oppenheimer told Page2Live. “He did look gaunt and skinny at his sentencing. His son Andy suffered from lymphoma. His brother, Peter, had stomach cancer. One of his nephews, Roger, died of cancer in his 30s.

“However, I asked several family members who helped me with the book if Bernie ever had cancer, and they all said ‘no!’”

Besides, wouldn’t a weasel like Madoff use his alleged illness to ask for a reduction of sentence on humanitarian grounds? Madoff, whose seized house on North Lake Way in Palm Beach is being put up for sale by authorities, was handed down a 150-year sentence June 29 without addressing his health.

“That’s the point,” Oppenheimer said. “His $7,000-suit (tailored to hide his cellphone) just hung on him at the sentencing. But he didn’t tell the judge anything about dying.”

Said another Madoff author, Too Good To Be True writer Erin Arvedlund: “His camp leaked that cancer story soon after he was arrested. Could it be true? Sure. Why didn’t use it to get sympathy? Because he wanted the focus on him getting a harsh punishment so that his family would be left alone.”

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Papalexis

Finally, it’s Palm Beach bizman Thanos Papalexis’ turn to talk.

Six weeks after the start of his murder trial in London, Papalexis and his defense attorneys started presenting his side Friday.

In a statement to a jury convened at the Old Bailey courthouse, Papalexis denied taking part in the murder of a caretaker nicknamed Bambi, a man who wouldn’t leave a London warehouse that Papalexis bought to develop into luxury apartments.

“I have no knowledge or involvement in that murder,” Papalexis said, according to a pool report by the Press Association. “If I had any idea about what had gone on, I would have called the authorities. There would be no possibility of me getting involved with anybody who did that.”

Two other men described as Papalexis’ henchmen are also on trial.

At home in the Palm Beach area less than a year ago, the British citizen parlayed his claims of being a wealthy entrepreneur into hosting former Pres. Bill Clinton for a political fundraiser.

By then, Papalexis was trying to start a luxury fractional club. But without enough cash but with lawsuits mounting, he eventually failed.

He was arrested in November by the US Marshals during lunch at a downtown West Palm Beach terrace. By Christmas, he was extradited.

For more, including why Papalexis may be lying, look below or click (Read more…)