South Florida and the Material Fuel for Financial Fraud

Keywords: Florida, Fraud, Material Culture, Cultural Economy
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Following in the tradition of many economic geographers, in this paper I analyze the basis of a well-defined, concentrated, sectoral cluster. Only, in this case, the agglomeration falls outside the bounds of legality. Namely, I am examining the extreme of concentration of successfully prosecuted fraud cases in the US District Court of Southern Florida. From 2015-2020, the Southern District of Florida prosecuted 7% of all the federal fraud cases in the United States (which is 2.8% more than the next closest district), despite containing only 1.8% of the US population. While there are many reasons that contribute to this cluster (including concentrated deployment of specialist law enforcement, strong transnational connections to less regulated/enforced economies, and the racial biases that plague fraud prosecutions in similar manner to other types of criminal prosecutions), what I will focus on here is the way the material culture of South Florida makes many of these fraudulent activities possible. From seldom occupied, foreign owned-real estate that fueled a spat of residential title frauds, through neighborhood-based networks that invented or inflated business payrolls to apply for pandemic-relief loans/grants, to the large number of cryptocurrency firms that have physically located in the city due to a combination of leisure landscapes and boosterism/resources from Miami’s mayor (whose private law firm has a large crypto currency portfolio) – this paper shows that South Florida’s unique assemblages of material culture are a major factor why fraud concentrates so heavily there.