Jolly holiday shopping season already underway

Lilian Stoppa and Renata Rosa stepped out of Target in Midtown Miami with a cart piled high with holiday gifts.

Landing in Miami on Thursday morning for a five-day shopping spree, they already had spent $800 by mid-afternoon on presents for family members: toys for Rosa’s daughter, beauty items for Stoppa’s mother, plus lots of other stuff.

“This is just the start,” giggled Stoppa, 30, who works with Rosa, also 30, at a Sao Paulo telecom company. Their next stops: Sawgrass Mills, Aventura Mall and Bal Harbour Shops, if their money holds out. “We came to Miami to shop because it’s very much cheaper than in Brazil.”

Tourists like Stoppa and Rosa are exactly the reason retail experts predict Florida’s holiday shopping season will see its highest increase since the recession.

Across South Florida, stores are getting a head start on the holidays in hopes of cashing in. Sales are already underway everywhere from Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, to Macy’s, Toys“R”Us and Anthropologie.

The Florida Retail Federation forecasts that Florida will see a 5.2 percent jump in holiday spending from $55 billion in 2011 to $58 billion this year, marking the highest percentage growth predicted since the economic slump began. Pre-recession, retail sales peaked at $54.3 billion in 2006.

“All of the indicators point to what we believe will be a very robust holiday shopping season,” said Florida Retail Federation President and Chief Executive Rick McAllister.

That also translates into more than 42,000 new retail jobs, he said.

Buoyed in large part by tourists and snowbirds, Florida is expected to outpace the nation in spending for the holiday season, as it did before the recession.

This year, the National Retail Federation is predicting holiday spending nationwide to rise 4.1 percent. On average, consumers are expected to spend about $750 each.

Economists point to strong consumer confidence as a major factor contributing to a stronger shopping season.

“By and large the consumer is very confident right now, and that usually leads to spending,” McAllister said.

Other indicators also point to a healthy season. ICSC, a trade association for the shopping center industry, this week released its ICSC-Goldman Sachs 2012 Holiday Spending Intentions Survey, which found that 19 percent of consumers plan to spend more, and 5 percent substantially more, on holiday gifts this year versus last year. It was the highest percentage of consumers reporting they intend to increase spending over the previous holiday season since ICSC began asking the question in 2004.

Retailers like West Elm are ready, beckoning gift givers. Stores are decked out with sparkly, eye-catching displays of items like candlesticks, ornaments and crystal paperweights.

“We’ve had lots of people shopping early, for several weeks,” said Ana Meza, an assistant manager at West Elm in Midtown Miami.

Without question, the holiday season is critical for retailers, a period when they typically generate 20 percent to 40 percent of the full year’s revenue.

This year brings an added bonus. With Thanksgiving falling early, the shopping season is stretched to 32 days, giving retailers more valuable time to rack up sales.

Shoppers like Jose Hernandez aren’t waiting for the last minute. Hernandez, who works as a civilian supervisor at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Gulfport, Miss., and spends every other three months home in Miami, started his holiday shopping this week. He figures he spent $2,000 at Carter’s, GUESS, Marshalls and Target in Midtown, and plans to spend a total of $5,000 — up 40 percent from last year — before Christmas Day.

“The economy is going up,” said Hernandez, 44.

Yet experts say that many holiday revelers will avoid the stores all together, opting instead for online purchases.

Retail experts expect e-commerce to continue to post a dramatic increase this holiday season, up 15 percent. Though it still represents only about 5 percent of all shopping, online buying is the fastest-growing segment of the retail industry, McAllister said.

Many online sites are offering percentage discounts starting this weekend. Disney Store will offer a selection of “Magical Friday” deals on sale beginning Monday, at DisneyStore.com. Kohl’s is letting customers shop more than 500 “Early Bird specials” on Kohls.com starting Wednesday.

While apparel is expected to be the top category for purchases, gift cards are again projected to outsell any single article of merchandise. The National Retail Federation’s 2012 holiday consumer spending survey showed that 81.1 percent of shoppers will purchase at least one gift card, spending an average of $156.86 on them.

“Gift cards are the best invention ever,” said Jennifer Mayer, 44, a drug representative who has three daughters and lives in Miami Beach. “It’s not for everyone, but it’s great for those you don’t intimately know.”

This year, Mayer plans to buy gift cards at places like Starbucks, H&M, Forever 21 and Barnes & Noble.

“They’re great for bosses. They’re great for teenagers,” she said. “They’re a lifesaver.”

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Former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz pens book about reinventing the city

Former Miami mayors don’t usually write books anyone would want to publish, much less read.

Then there’s Manny Diaz. Whether you admire him like many in Miami and across the country do, or excoriate him as some at home did, Diaz was hardly shy about embracing big plans and notions. And few would disagree that the city was a far different place when he exited City Hall in 2009 after two terms in office.

So it should come as no surprise that Diaz has written a book for a national audience, recapping his greatest hits as mayor. Recall police reform and Irish-cop Chief John Timoney, Midtown Miami, the downtown condo boom, the “mega-plan’’ and the innovative Miami 21 zoning plan. It’s been published by the über-serious University of Pennsylvania Press. No vanity press project, this.

But Miami Transformed: Rebuilding America One Neighborhood, One City at a Time, is no policy wonk-fest, either. A breezy read at just over 200 pages — index and foreword by New York mayor and Diaz buddy Michael Bloomberg included — the book is meant as a concise case-study of how a poor, crime-ridden and economically stagnant medium-sized city can be swiftly transformed into a flourishing, swaggering metropolis with a hurtling skyline and its own Tom Wolfe novel.

“I wanted to keep the book short and easy to read,’’ said Diaz, who will appear at the Freedom Tower for the Miami Book Fair International on Friday evening. “You can lose someone with a 750-page book really fast. So it’s sort of conversational, talking about how we got to where we are.’’

If features, of course, an ambitious Cuban-refugee protagonist who arrived as a 6-year-old child, grew up happy in Little Havana despite poverty, studied hard and became a successful lawyer and behind-the-scenes political fundraiser and operative. Then he was thrust into the spotlight by the curious case of another young Cuban refuge-seeker: the rafter-child Elián González, whose Miami relatives Diaz famously represented.

Diaz was in the family home in Little Havana, working on last-minute negotiations, when the Border Patrol broke down the door at gunpoint to take Elián, and says he still feels betrayed by then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, a former Miami-Dade state attorney who ordered the raid.

There is little inside baseball and only a few reveals: For instance, Diaz earned $1.10 an hour working as a janitor at Belen Jesuit Prep, where he was a student, under a federal jobs program.

All this and more is quickly recounted before Diaz, who wrote the book with longtime collaborator Ignacio Ortiz-Petit, gets into the heart of the matter: The eight years he served as mayor, which coincided with a dramatic real-estate boom and helped usher Miami into the rank of world cities with a changed downtown, regenerated neighborhoods, a growing, young population and the kind of buzz even the best promotional hype can’t buy.

The overriding goal of his administration, Diaz writes, was to bring the middle-class back to Miami from the suburbs by improving substandard city services, fostering both private development and affordable housing, and rebuilding crumbling streets. He also focused on creating alluring amenities, including parks, museums, and arts and cultural institutions, which he says are proven economic generators.

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Lily Collins Battles Creatures of the Underworld in 'The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones'

Mirror Mirror star Lily Collins faces a variety of decidedly nasty demons, warlocks, vampires, werewolves and other deadly creatures in the upcoming thriller The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, and we have a look at the action-packed trailer!

Pics: More 'Twilight' Photos!

Based on Cassandra Clare's best-selling book series, City of Bones casts Collins as Clary Fray, a seemingly ordinary teenager who discovers that she is part of a line of Shadowhunters, a secret force of young half-angel warriors locked in an ancient battle to protect our world from demons. After the disappearance of her mother (Lena Headey), she must embrace her fate and battle supernatural forces in a dangerous alternate New York City called Downworld.

Related: Lily Collins is a 'Modernized' Snow White

In theaters August 23, 2013, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones also stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jared Harris, CCH Pounder, Jamie Campbell Bower, Robert Sheehan, Kevin Zegers, Kevin Durand, Aidan Turner, Jemima West and Godfrey Gao.

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Pure self-defense

Benny Avni

After launching Israel’s first major military campaign of the Arab Spring era, Jerusalem is watching closely for reactions around the region — and in Washington.

President Obama, who has so far admirably backed Israel’s right to defend its citizens, will play a major role in this unfolding drama. How long will his support last?

To be sure, Operation Pillar of Defense (it’s actually “Pillar of Cloud” in Hebrew, a Biblical reference) wasn’t conceived as a test of Israel’s neighbors or the world. It was launched Wednesday to end weeks of rocket attacks from Gaza and a growing strategic threat.

Getty Images

Innocents at risk: Israelis taking shelter this week against Hamas rockets in a large concrete pipe used as a bomb shelter in Kiryat Malachi.

Until Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s image was that of a tough-talker who’s actually extremely cautious about using the military.

Indeed, Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister, last decade, was the only premiership in Israeli history unmarred by war — and he could’ve easily sailed to victory in the Jan. 22 national election with the same record in this term.

Hamas’ leaders certainly saw Bibi as war-shy; they’ve been attacking southern Israel for weeks, apparently believing they could do so with impunity. They escalated the shooting, then started crowing about it — abandoning their past pretenses that small factions they couldn’t control were responsible.

The group’s military leaders no longer even sought shelter as the rockets rained down on Israel.

Oops: On Wednesday, an Israeli drone obliterated a car carrying one of those leaders, Ahmad Jaabari.

The pinpoint hit was not only based on impeccable intelligence, but also instantly documented on video for anyone with a Twitter account to see.

Over several years, Jaabari had transformed Hamas from a ragtag collection of disparate Islamist groups into a well-organized army. As its military commander, he masterminded numerous attacks against Israel, including the 2006 kidnapping of Sgt. Gilad Shalit.

Crucially, Jaabari used Iranian support to build an impressive arsenal, including dozens of long-range Fajr-5 missiles that can reach Tel Aviv — a strategic threat that Israel couldn’t ignore.

And didn’t: Before Hamas had time to catch its breath after the Jaabari execution, IDF air and naval assets launched a quick second phase, eliminating most of Gaza’s Fajr launchers and depriving Hamas of its “doomsday” weapon.

With that one-two punch, the IDF got its mojo back. It’s now continuing mop-up operations, trying to inflict maximum harm on Hamas’ military infrastructure.

As Hamas armed these last few years, Israel was creating (with US help) the Iron Dome anti-missile system, which proved to be a game-changer this week, intercepting over 80 percent of the hundreds of missiles launched from Gaza since Wednesday.

A couple of Fajr missiles did manage to survive the first-day attack, reaching the Tel Aviv area yesterday and landing in vacant lots. Three Israelis were also killed in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi.

Meanwhile, the IDF has managed to keep the Gaza noncombatant casualty count relatively low so far — considering that Hamas placed its missiles in densely-populated areas.

Yet Arabs across the region are understandably irate. Rulers like Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi must play a delicate game. Cairo recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv and got the UN Security Council to convene a symbolic “emergency” session Wednesday night.

Then again, Morsi has so far managed to rebuff the Islamist advisers who want him to nullify the peace treaty with Israel. And Egyptian intelligence officers are starting to mediate a cease-fire, using their established ties with Israel and Hamas.

But today Egypt’s prime minister, Hisham Qandil, plans to visit a Gaza mosque for Friday prayers. How long canMorsi ride the tiger of rising street anger?

Obama can help. He was likely informed of Israel’s intended action on Monday, when Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, quietly visited the White House. On Wednesday, Obama spoke with Morsi on the phone, seeking to influence his next moves.

Publicly, the president expressed nearly unqualified support for Israel. But he’s under pressure from US allies in the region, including key Hamas supporters Turkey and Qatar, to reverse course. And some in his inner circles may see this as an opportunity to finally “put some distance” between America and Israel.

Tehran is watching. The mullahs may see the Gaza fight, and its effect on a region in turmoil, as a dress rehearsal for the much-discussed military confrontation over Iran’s nukes.

But even if Obama remains adamantly opposed to such confrontation, he’d be ill-advised to qualify America’s support for Israel’s current war against terrorists.

After all, it’s small-scale, intel-based, drone-fueled, assassination-rich warfare — the approach we’re now using in our wars.

beavni@gmail.com

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Watchdog groups question tourism agency’s CEO pick

TALLAHASSEE --
The day after the CEO of the state’s top tourism agency announced he was stepping down, board members quickly handpicked his replacement.

There was only one problem. Picking Visit Florida’s chief marketing officer Will Seccombe to head the agency without doing a national search could upset the agency’s main funders — state legislators and Gov. Rick Scott.

Visit Florida’ solution: give a recruiting firm a no-bid, $45,000, two-month contract to conduct a nationwide CEO search. The firm, Minnesota-based Searchwide, just happened to be the same one that brought in Seccombe five years earlier.

Now, a state watchdog group is slamming the agency's recruiting process, saying it suggests either favoritism, government waste, or both.

The developments highlight the awkward relationship between Visit Florida's board and elected state officials who control so much of the agency's budget. While the board appears set to hire Seccombe, its handling of the transition process could lead to more scrutiny from the very lawmakers who control the agency's purse strings

“Visit Florida claims to be an equal opportunity employer, but it appears they have rigged their hiring process to unfairly benefit the acting president,” said Dan Krassner, executive director for Integrity Florida, which advocates for tougher ethics laws, and is now questioning whether the swift recruiting process is completely open and fair.

Searchwide, which signed the contract on Oct. 5, did not respond to requests for comments. The agency is expected to complete its nationwide search by early December.

Experts in the field of executive talent recruitment say that such a short period is abnormal for a national CEO search.

“That’s a really aggressive timetable,” said Theresa Rohr, senior associate at Stanton Chase International, a global executive search firm with offices in San Francisco. “For a CEO, very aggressive.”

While Searchwide is a top name in the hospitality industry, Visit Florida has used it only once before: to recruit Seccombe in 2007.

Visit Florida’s former CEO, Chris Thompson, who left in October to head up a national tourism agency, defended the decision to give the contract to Searchwide. While Seccombe may have an advantage as an “incumbent,” all candidates will be considered, he said.

He pointed out that Searchwide also had been retained by Visit Orlando for an executive search this year.

“It is absolutely in no way, shape or form going through the motions,” Thompson said. “It is a legitimate search.”

But Visit Orlando offers a useful comparison. The Central Florida tourism agency hired Searchwide to do a national search for a CEO back in May. A spokesman said the organization doesn’t expect the process to be completed until January. Several other companies that have contracted with Searchwide have given the company more than six months to complete a national search.

When Thompson announced he was leaving, some board members, in an emergency meeting, quickly decided to promote Seccombe to the $225,000-a-year CEO position.

Doing so would allow the state-funded agency to have a permanent CEO in place before Scott and the Legislature began making crucial decisions about how much taxpayer money the organization should get next year.

“I don’t think we need to put the time, money and effort into a nationwide search,” said John Perez, a hotel executive who sits on Visit Florida’s board. “I think we have a very competent replacement for Chris, in Will, already in place.”

But some board members were concerned about the perception of appointing a new CEO without consulting the Legislature or conducting an official search — something they believed Scott, Florida’s businessman-turned-governor, would expect.

Visit Florida relies on the Florida Legislature for a large chunk of its operating revenue. The public-private organization bolsters its budget with free advertising from private partners, but its cash revenue is overwhelmingly taxpayer-funded. That means the Legislature and governor hold sway over the future finances of the organization.

Visit Florida has been a darling of Scott and the Legislature in recent years. As most state agencies weathered drastic budget cuts in the last two years, Visit Florida saw its taxpayer funding more than double to $54 million.

At least one Visit Florida board member said the Legislature feels it should have a say in how the agency conducts because of lawmakers’ generosity.

“I think if we’ve all learned anything from our past, it is that there is a certain entitlement from the Legislature because there’s so much funding that they now allow us to have,” said Carol Dover, president of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association.

The organization should “dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s” before appointing Seccombe as CEO, she warned.

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More I-595 ramp changes coming to Hiatus, Flamingo exits

A major ramp change beginning Friday morning will affect how drivers get off westbound Interstate 595 at Hiatus and Flamingo roads. At 5 a.m. Friday, the combined off-ramp will open, and the current ramps will permanently close.

Drivers trying to enter westbound I-595 from Nob Hill or Hiatus roads will find those on-ramps closed. Instead, they’ll travel west on State Road 84 and merge onto I-595 just east of Flamingo.

The changes are designed to improve traffic flow and eliminate weaving caused by traffic entering I-595 in the same spot as traffic trying to get to the next exit.

Read the full story at Sun-Sentinel.com.

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Verizon says 1.4 million customers back on its fiber optic network

(Reuters) – Verizon Communications said fiber optic services have been restored to more than 1.4 million customers hurt by Hurricane Sandy.

The provider of telephone, Internet and television services said on November 1 that it may take another two weeks to restore telecommunication services for its customers after flooding and power outages knocked out services.

The company said it completed 364,000 repairs across the mid-Atlantic and northeast regions.

Verizon said it will provide credits for landline customers and fix equipment damaged due to the hurricane.

Verizon shares were up at $ 42.39 after the bell on Wednesday. They closed at $ 42.24 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting By Pallavi Ail in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Soros Ex-tra

Jennifer Gould Keil

Susan Weber Soros (pictured), ex-wife of billionaire George Soros, can easily afford to buy a new trophy home even though she’s still trying to find a deep-pocketed buyer for her current residence.

She just purchased an East 70th Street townhouse near Park Avenue for its full $22.5 million asking price. The five-floor mansion, which was listed by Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio, was built in 1869 and offers 6,660 square feet with five bedrooms, four-plus bathrooms, an elevator, two terraces and a chef’s kitchen and breakfast room in a glass gazebo that leads to the 26-foot-deep garden.

Dave Allocca/Starpix

Doutzen Kroes

ANDREAS BRANCH/PatrickMcMullan.c

Susan Weber

Soros still has her 6,000-square-foot, five-bedroom unit at the Majestic on Central Park West listed for a show-stopping $50 million. Fully furnished, it comes with a separate, one-bedroom “staff” apartment.

Supermodel takes a peek

Dutch damsel/Victoria’s Secret angel Doutzen Kroes (pictured) is on the hunt for a townhouse to share with DJ husband Sunnery James and their 1-year-old son, Phyllon Joy Gorre,

Our spies spotted her traipsing through Chelsea, where she looked at one $4.5 million listing. Kroes was No. 5 on Forbes’ 2012 list of highest-paid models, with $6.9 million in yearly earnings.

Fifth dimensions

A four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom, 3,335-square-foot condo at 1049 Fifth Ave., the building that’s been home to Mariah Carey and Rush Limbaugh, is on the market for $13.5 million. The apartment features stunning Central Park Reservoir views, with a living room, formal dining room, library and breakfast room that all face the park.

Broker Carol Staab of Prudential Douglas Elliman has the listing.

Majestic indeed

Famed collage artist Barbara Kruger, known for her layered black-and-white photos overlaid with bold red captions, is in contract to buy a penthouse loft at the Majestic on Central Park West.

The apartment, which had a $2.25 million asking price and is billed as “an art lover’s dream,” was designed by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. The one-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op offers “breathtaking, panoramic views” of Central Park and Fifth Avenue. Customized features include museum-quality lighting and motorized shades.

Broker Michael Graves of Core had the listing.

Better Laight

Michael Rennie, a director at consulting firm McKinsey’s Sydney office, has just sold his TriBeCa penthouse at 48 Laight St. for $4.52 million.

The buyer, businessman Anthony Imperapo, who bid significantly above the $4.25 million asking price, will get three bedrooms and three bathrooms in its 2,566 square feet.

The sprawling residence is a full-floor loft with 12-foot-ceilings, a “state-of-the-art chef’s kitchen” and floor-to-ceiling casement windows with downtown views. The apartment also has a 900-square-foot private terrace.

The buyer was represented by Corcoran Group brokers Victoria
Terri-Cote and Cristina Cote. The seller was represented by Tim Cass, also of the Corcoran Group.

Checking in

Some downtown celebrities displaced by Hurricane Sandy are now staying at the Mercer Hotel. Among the temporary residents at the SoHo mainstay are Courtney Love and Colin Farrell, both of whom have been spotted at the hotel by our spies. The 75-room boutique property is the sister hotel of Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont.

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Steve Wozniak, Chris Hughes share tales with Coconut Grove audience

Co-founders from two of Silicon Valley’s most innovative companies gave a South Florida audience a glimpse into the early days of developing the technology that would reshape the world.

Steve Wozniak, formerly of Apple, and Chris Hughes, of Facebook, were back-to-back speakers of the three-day Americas Business Council’s Continuity Forum that wrapped up Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove.

The conference brought together innovators, activists, and thought leaders in entrepreneurship and philanthropy and also showcased 32 emerging social entrepreneurial ventures from around the Americas.

On Wednesday afternoon, both men relayed plenty of stories.

As a teenager, Wozniak used to hole up in his bedroom on the weekends, designing a computer on paper.

And he made a game of it — every weekend he would try to make a machine that would work just as well or better but cost a little less than the last design.

That engineering mentality to build things more efficiently as well as the desire to learn never left him, he told the audience. “I would buy my college books on a Friday and be halfway through before the first class on Monday.”

Then he met Steve Jobs, and began working with him on a variety of projects. “Steve Jobs was a hippie with no money. I was an engineer with no money. We had to think creatively. I designed projects for fun, and he would figure out how to make money,” Wozniak recalled as he told how he invented the Apple I and Apple II that started it all and the company’s ups and downs through the years. He called the iPhone the greatest product ever.

As one of the Facebook co-founders that lived in the famous Harvard dorm room, Chris Hughes said the movie The Social Network got a lot of things wrong.

“Our dorm wasn’t like a luxury condo, there was no sex in the bathroom, as far as I know. An alcohol-fueled hackathon, while it looked like a lot of fun, didn’t happen.”

Hughes told the story of Facebook and described his roommate Mark Zuckerberg as “highly analytical and very skeptical of conventional wisdom.” What the movie did get right, Hughes told the crowd: “Facebook is the defining example of American ingenuity and entrepreneurship of the 21st century.” And at the core: “There’s a new universal respect for the entrepreneur.”

Hughes, now owner and publisher of The New Republic, also talked about his current passion: How to use mobile and social technologies to support serious long-form journalism into the 21st century.

“Conventional wisdom says this kind of journalism isn’t sustainable. Cynics say the golden age of journalism has past,” said Hughes.

Yet, over the past six months Hughes said it is the long, in-depth New Republic stories that have gone viral.

“Folks are reading just as much news today, if not more. ... We have an opportunity to deliver it across a limitless number of devices. [These trends] all come together to suggest … we are entering a true golden age of journalism.”

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Parkland pot grower guilty of murder

WEST PALM BEACH --
For five years, Edwin Febonio has been waiting for his son’s murderer to be brought to justice.

When a jury Tuesday convicted former Parkland pot-grower Jose Alfaro of second-degree murder for shooting Stephen Febonio in the back of the head, stuffing his body in a freezer and burying it in a Delray Beach yard, the dead man’s 78-year-old father wiped tears from his eyes and hugged one of his son’s lifelong friends.

“I’m real happy,” the elder Febonio, a retired Peabody, Mass., police officer, said outside the courtroom.

Alfaro, who bragged about his lucrative marijuana grow-house business but insisted he wasn’t a murderer when he testified in his defense, showed no emotion as Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies slapped on the handcuffs to take him back to jail. Attorney Michael Cohen said he was glad his 31-year-old client avoided a first-degree murder conviction.

“You’re never satisfied with a guilty verdict,” he said. But the jury’s decision may mean Alfaro could one day walk free, he said.

Prosecutors Aleathea McRoberts and Cheryl Caracuzzo said they are hoping he doesn’t. They said they will ask Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Richard Oftedal to send Alfaro to prison for life when he is sentenced Jan. 2.

Further, they said, because the jury found Alfaro guilty of using a firearm to kill Febonio, he will spend at least 25 years in prison with no ability to earn gain time. If he gets a life sentence, he will die in prison because Florida abolished parole more than 20 years ago.

“We’re satisfied we did the right thing,” McRoberts said.

The 2007 murder confounded sheriff’s detectives for two years. A note Febonio, 45, left with his parents before his disappearance provided clues but no proof of his murder. If he disappeared, he told them to contact federal agents.

He stumbled onto Alfaro’s marijuana operation when he did construction work for him. Febonio threatened to tell police about the enterprise if Alfaro didn’t pay him the $10,000 he was owed.

Eventually, some of those involved in the operation began cooperating with sheriff’s Detective Sean Oliver. The detective found Febonio’s body in a freezer buried in the backyard of a house Alfaro rented in Delray Beach. Alfaro fled to New York, where he was arrested.

During his testimony last week, Alfaro turned the tables on his accusers. He claimed an “associate” who helped Oliver build the case against him was the trigger man. He claimed the associate, Doc Morrow, shot Febonio in Alfaro’s Parkland home. At the time, he said he was at a friend’s house smoking pot.

Prosecutors challenged Alfaro’s claims, pointing out that he had never denied his involvement, much less fingered Morrow. Why, they asked, didn’t he tell investigators if he was innocent?

Alfaro responded: “If I’m going to tell anybody it’s going to be a jury. I’m not going to cooperate with law enforcement.”

Cohen claimed the prosecutors violated Alfaro’s constitutional rights by putting his client in the position of having to prove his innocence.

Alfaro also faces federal charges for stealing a man’s identity, which he used to get a passport. He tried to use it to flee to Costa Rica, but authorities there denied him entry.

In the meantime, Edwin Febonio said he was anxious to tell his wife that their son’s killer had been convicted. While he attended every day of the weeklong trial, he said he purposely didn’t look at some of the more grisly evidence of his son’s murder.

“I want to remember him the way he was,” he said.

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