Raban, on his old job

Brent Raban, a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office sergeant once known on the tough streets of Belle Glade as “The Punisher,” was fired by Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.

Raban, 34, an 11-year veteran, broke his promise to be good made last year to save his job when he was demoted to patrolman. He’d been bragging on Facebook about beating suspects.

Now, one of his neighbors in Lake Worth has been complaining Raban is “harassing” and “intimidating” her, and Internal Affairs recommended after a long probe that he be terminated.

Bradshaw signed off on it Friday.

Raban made news last year when it was revealed he patrolled the nightscape wearing a camouflage skullcap with the word PUNISHMENT. His strange Facebook postings also surfaced.

In one, he wrote he considered his job to be not so much about fighting crime as about applying punishment! Another read: “But like a good batterer, I know the areas that hide the marks well.” Better yet: Raban, who admitted to being a fan of comic books with troubled heroes like Batman and The Punisher, once commented how he hadn’t beaten anyone in 11 days.

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Loeb and Vergara in Los Angeles last year (Courtesy People en Espanol)

Former State Senate candidate Nick Loeb was in critical condition today at a Los Angeles area hospital after a single-car crash in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood.

Loeb, 35, who also ran unsuccessfully for Delray Beach City Commission, is mostly known in Tinseltown for the company he keeps. He has been romantically linked to sitcom star Sofia Vergara, who lives near the crash site.

The West Coast website TMZ reports this morning that paramedics found the trust-funder Loeb suffered a severely broken leg and a “deep gash” to his chest in the crash, which occurred on a narrow, winding road running through hilly Bel-Air.

While Vergara stars in the ABC hit series Modern Family, Loeb has been dabbling in movie production. He is the son of Ronald Reagan White House ambassador John Loeb and a cousin of former Seagram boss Edgar Bronfman.

Loeb was recently divorced from his Swedish wife Anna, who was arrested for DUI in Delray shortly after Loeb announced his candidacy for Sen. Jeff Atwater’s seat last year. Loeb quit the race a month later and took up with Vergara.

– Nick Loeb never had to scrounge for a hot date. Click here for racy photos of his conquests

(Click on the photo for more)

Hard to believe, but Grease sweetheart Olivia Newton-John is about to turn 62! Here is the cancer-surviving Jupiter Inlet Colony resident with her nature conservationist hubby, John Easterling, at a Miami Beach junket last week. The two were married two years ago at the Jupiter Beach Resort. (Click here for more photos)

– Click here for a bird’s eye view of Newton-John’s Jupiter Inlet Colony’s home on the exclusive Page2Live map of celebs

The Detters in 2000, as Wendy receives the Palm Beach Post's Distinguished Law Officer of the Year (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

The pending divorce of a husband and his wife, both West Palm Beach cops, spilled into their workplace recently.

The husband, Police Officer Steve Detter, 49, complained that his wife, Community Response Division Sgt. Wendy Detter, 48, searched his workstation for his girlfriend’s phone number then called her — while on duty.

Steve also told the brass he was worried Wendy would confront the paramour in person, and that Wendy has been checking out the girlfriend’s Facebook page from her city-owned computer.

So Internal Affairs got involved. And Wendy — winner in 2000 of The Palm Beach Post’s Distinguished Law Officer of the Year — was found to have used Facebook while on duty.

She faces a three-day suspension.

Wendy told the IA sleuths that she just wanted to print the Facebook entries of the husband’s paramour about romantic trips to use in their divorce. She added that she, not the paramour, is the victim of cyberstalking.

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Kimberly Hicks, of West Palm Beach (Click on the Mike Jachles photo for the full gallery)

I only spoke with New York Yankees great Joe DiMaggio twice, but I’m pretty sure the crusty old guy wouldn’t have approved!

Still, the 15th Annual South Florida Tattoo Expo was expected to raise more than $50,000 for Hollywood’s Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

– Click here for the photo gallery

Several thousand tattoo and body-piercing enthusiasts are gathering at the Hilton Deerfield Beach this the weekend to discuss the latest ink trends, enjoy bands and camaraderie and, yes, get some more body art.

Santiago Borges, from Miami, receives yet another tattoo (Click on the Mike Jachles picture for more)

Horn

There’s one job that U. S. Congress candidate Jim Horn, a self-described traditional values Democrat, forgot to add to his extensive resume as restaurateur, boat-racer and body-building products salesman.

But it’s something that many lovesick people in the Boca Raton area do remember!

Horn, 56, once worked as the vice president of Soulmates by Helena, a dating service whose owner pleaded no contest to two dozen charges of grand theft in 2004. She was ordered to pay back $300,000 in restitution to 41 former clients.

Matchmaker Helena Amram was also banned from operating her business in Palm Beach County while serving a five-year probation.

She was accused of fixing some of her rich clients — who paid up to $100,000 for a mate — with poor or sick or disabled dates. Some of the clients, meanwhile, included men with herpes and criminal records.

What about Horn, who’s seeking a seat once held by Mark Foley and Tim Mahoney?

At first Horn, who has moved to Palm City, told me he was never an employee of the company and never received a paycheck from Soulmates.

But when I reminded him of his testimony in an unrelated bankruptcy, in which he stated under oath that he was indeed a Soulmates employee and its vice president, he changed his tune.

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Dean Turney with his wife, Priscila

A popular Palm Beach County Commissioner is arrested, resigns and issues a made-for-TV mea culpa — all in less than 12 hours.

Convenient, isn’t it?

Something about the Jeff Koons scandal smells of a Versailles palace-style intrigue — one that results in the county’s shadowy establishment getting rid of one of its own.

Koons’ well-connected “Judas,” Dean Turney, was not only his closest friend for nearly 25 years — he also ran most of Democrat Koons’ seven political campaigns, five for West Palm Beach Commission and two for Palm Beach County!

“Everyone is dumbfounded about this,” said a local Democratic party operative who asked not to be identified. “Everybody likes Jeff Koons. And Dean is his best friend!”

According to the probable cause affidavit, the 62-year-old Koons left nasty voice messages on to lobbyist Turney’s phone a few weeks ago. Koons took offense with the fact Turney worked for a family that stood in the way of his pet project, and promised to use his elected office to retaliate.

Once upon a time, this sort of spat would have been handled behind closed doors, one-on-one.

Instead,  the recordings ended up in the office of the ambitious new state attorney, Mike “Future Governor of Florida” McAuliffe, and the clock on Koons’ fall from grace started ticking.

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Jeff Koons' booking mug (Click on the photo for more locals in trouble)

To some, he was known as the Palm Beach County Commission’s Mr. Nice Guy, a multi-millionaire trust-funder Democrat who’s both educated and concerned with the environment.

Today Jeff Koons, who represents voters wedged between I-95 and the Turnpike, was just released from the county lockup on Gun Club Road in West Palm Beach.

Overnight, he was charged with: perjury, extortion and violating public meeting laws.

He resigned the elected position that had been his since 2002.

Basically, Koons is accused of threatening political retaliation against citizens opposing his pet project.

He is the fourth commissioner arrested since 2006 on public corruption-related charges: former county chair Tony Masilotti is about to be sprung from a federal prison camp; Mary McCarty is still serving a three-year sentence; and Warren Newell is in a half-way house after being released from prison.

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– Click here for the Palm Beach Post’s up-to-the-minute coverage

– Click here for a bird’s eye view of Koons’ modest West Palm Beach home

Three days after former WPBF-Channel 25 anchorwoman Lisa Hayward was arrested for DUI, her husband, Miami’s WSVN-Channel 7 reporter Derek Hayward, ended up seeing the inside of a jail cell on suspicion of domestic violence.

According to the arrest report, Derek, 59, was nabbed by Coconut Creek cops Saturday night after a spat with Lisa as they drove home from a restaurant with their children, sons who are 10 and 13.

Derek Hayward's mug shot, courtesy Coconut Creek Police (Click on the photo for more)

An insider tells me the Haywards were arguing about Lisa’s recent arrest when things really got heated up. Derek, who drove, admitted he grabbed his wife by her shirt as she sat on the passenger’s seat, then kicked her and the children out.

Lisa's booking mug (Click on the photo for more)

He was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor. There was no evidence he hit her.

Known for his British accent and hard-hitting tabloid-style reporting, Hayward has been a permanent fixture on the SoFla media landscape for 20 years, always at the Fox affiliate.

He and Lisa have been married for 17 years. He once described how scared he was when, in 2008, Lisa stopped responding to phone calls and vanished for several hours after a public appearance. Derek and the Channel 25 brass were alerting police departments alongside I-95 when she popped up about 1 a.m. Her cell’s ring was on silent, and she didn’t realize she’d been receiving frantic calls.

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Vanilla Ice, and a contractor on the house he is rebuilding in Welly for a TV show (Click on the photo for more)

Vanilla Ice promised back in May that he’d do what he called a “kick ass” stunt to make the reality TV show he’s finishing a little more exciting.

He delivered.

Ice, who lives in the Versailles community in Wellington, drove a ‘67 Cadillac up a short ramp, through a ring of fire and into a pond. It all happened last week on land Ice, aka Rob Van Winkle, owns in the north part of Palm Beach County.

Check it out:

The 42-year-old singer of Ice Ice Baby has been working on a TV show all summer in which he attempts to flip a distressed property down the street from his in Versailles.

When the entertainer bought the place in foreclosure earlier this year, vandals stole wall fixtures, garden and pool equipment, tiles, pavers and the appliances. So Ice and his crew have been pimping the crib up, hoping to sell it for at least three times the $420,000 he paid for it.

Ice told Page2Live when I toured the house in May that he’d add pranks and stunts to turn up the entertainment value of the program.

As for the Caddy stunt, in case you’re wondering, no one got hurt. The rapper-turned-builder emerged from the sinking car while pumping his fists in the air. He then disappeared underwater as his entourage wondered if he was drowning.

He did eventually come up for air.

– Click here for the original story about the show

– Click here for a bird’s eye view of Vanilla Ice’s home, and the house he is rebuilding on the exclusive Page2Live map of celebrities