The Luis Cantos Story

1979

Written 2010 and reviewed 03/2014* 5,869 Words

By Howard Yasgar

The complicated Luis Edison Cantos story was first written by me in 1979 and then reviewed in 2014, it was written to the best of my recollection.

My association with Luis Cantos was an excellent example of the old saying, “No good deed goes

unpunished”.

In 1963, I purchased from David and Sadie Chait 10 % of the Automotive Parts Industries company which were then known as API, located in Hialeah Florida.

In early 1963, when I first arrived in Florida, I started supplying used auto parts to rebuilding companies, and API was one of my customers.

At that time API had around 10 employees.

Several years later, around 1967, I purchased an additional 10% of the company stock.

It was stock held by a loan shark company called Canaveral Capital Corporation.

Canaveral Capital held back 10% of API stock as vigorish on a loan that Dave Chait had taken out. He had done it without telling me.

Around 1966, Dave Chait, who was the majority stockholder of API, hired his son Donald to work in the company.

Donald was formerly a salesman selling candy to the drugstore market.

Donald and I were about the same age.

In 1960 Don’s father David Chait passed away and rather than our closing the company, Donald and I purchased the assets from his mother Sadie for $35,000.00. Donald and I then divided the company equally between us.

I now know that was a big mistake on my part.

From 1960 on, we continued to run the business as automotive parts rebuilders or API.

In the late 1960’s the Miami business climate in Miami was changing due to the influx of Cuban refugees. Many refugees after arriving in Miami began competing with us by rebuilding parts in their homes and then selling rebuilt parts to our customers for cash.

It became obvious to us that we needed to change our strategy to survive.

We needed to develop a more specialized type of rebuilding business, a business that the local Cuban mechanics couldn’t easily get into doing.

That’s when API entered the rebuilding of marine outboard engine starters. It was a novel business with much less competition.

We called our new division API Marine.

From around 1967 on, API Marine began growing at a rapid pace, and at the time we made most of our sales in the local Miami market.

I was doing most of the rebuilding and my partner Don was handling the office staff and the company books.

Besides rebuilding marine items, our company continued to rebuild automotive items as it had always done.

By1979, Automotive Parts Industries and API Marine were both functioning profitably.

Our API Marine sales were growing, and we now started selling outside of the Miami area.

At that point, API Marine was set up as a separate corporation.

I spent most of my time in the shop keeping up with production, as well as developing new products, as we expanded our product line into the rebuilding of marine starters and alternators for inboard boats.

At the time we were one of the only companies rebuilding inboard marine parts.

API Marine then hired several sales representatives to sell its rebuilt marine parts nationwide.

By 1979 most of our American shop employees, had left the company. They had left, one by one, all saying it was because they didn’t want to listen anymore to the other employees speaking Spanish.

Soon our entire staff was entirely Hispanic.

Trying to deal with the Latino employees who were always arguing became a common problem.

Fights among employees coming from different countries were now almost an everyday occurrence. It became apparent that having Hispanic employees presented us with a whole new problem.

It became obvious that for us to cope with the Latino work ethics, a Hispanic manager was needed, Anglo business psychology no longer worked for us.

Our company advertised for Spanish speaking management, but none of the people interviewed had any type of production experience.

One day in late 1979 a young Ecuadorian man came in to apply for a job, and he said he had rebuilding experience, so I agreed to interview him.

His said his name was Luis Edison Cantos.

Luis said he was from Ecuador, but he had lived several years in New York City, working in a factory like ours.

I couldn’t believe our good fortune as Luis was possibly just the type of person we were looking for.

Luis was a handsome guy, he was a short fellow, perhaps about 5 foot 2 or 3 inches tall,

Luis had wavy black hair, and he spoke English with a Spanish accent, but his English was pretty good.

During the interview Luis went on to tell me about his entire life history.

Luis said that, at an early age, he had worked with his father, in Ecuador as an electrician. His father was also named Edison.

He said that when he came to the United States, he married a Puerto Rican girl in New York, and they had a son.

Luis said that one day, for some unknown reason, his wife came after him with a knife.

Luis then got divorced and moved to Florida.

His ex-wife and his son went to live in Puerto Rico.

I felt Luis could be the salvation of the problems we were having with API Marine.

I spoke very frankly with him, and I told him of the problems we were having, and he understood everything that I told him, so I decided to make Luis an offer that he couldn’t refuse.

Luis said he had been earning $150.00 a week in New York, so I offered him $200.00 a week and an increase in 30 days once we could see what he could do.

Luis was very appreciative and told me that it was his dream to manage or own his own parts rebuilding operation, So I told him, that if he straightened out our problems with API Marine, I would help him set up a company that he could run.

I think that Luis was happy he had found a position in Miami that was perfect for him. It was going to be both financially rewarding, as well as the possibility of a good future.

In the first week running API Marine’s shop, Luis started to set up a better production line to assemble parts.

After one week of increased production, Luis told me he was approached by one of the shop ring leaders, who happened to be a Colombian.

why are you doing so much work, the Colombian said, you will never get any more money, slow down like we do. You only need to make a few pieces every day, work less, no one here knows the difference.

When Luis related the conversation to us, it was pretty much as we had expected.”

After 30 days of increased production, we gave Luis a substantial raise. Seeing this the Colombian troublemaker quit the company.

Everyone now saw that Luis did make more money by increasing production.

Now we had no problem replacing employees, Luis did all the interviewing and weeded out the bad applicants.

The fact that Luis was Ecuadorian didn’t sit well with the other Hispanic employees, and it took a lot of time, but eventually Luis prevailed, and API Marine continued to grow.

Luis really did know the rebuilding business. He was an excellent mechanic as well as a good learner.

When I was in the shop, he watched every move I made, and he copied everything I did.

In 1982 we purchased another building, it was on the corner of NW 48 Street and 36 Ave about 2 blocks down the Street from our office and the API Marine factory.

It was decided that it was time that Luis should manage on his own a separate division which we would call AAA Auto Electric.

By setting up this new Company, it could help me keep the promise I had made to Luis.

At the time our combined company businesses had more than enough work to be able to sub-contract a lot of it out to Luis.

Luis could hire his own employees and run the company as he saw fit and we would all share in the profits. We did it with all the costs covered by API.

At no time was any money invested by Luis.

At the time we were just starting to get orders to rebuild military parts, and the military orders we received were from wholesale dealers, and we had not yet started selling directly to the government.

Our company kept its main offices and the API Marine rebuilding facility, at 4500 NW 36 Avenue.

Luis started out the new business by hiring his brother Guido, who came down from New York.

He also hired three other employees, and API kept sending him more work.

With his substantial income Luis began to travel back to Ecuador frequently and that’s where he met up with his old childhood girlfriend Esmeralda.

Luis said that Esmeralda had a small beauty salon in Ecuador and he had a hard time talking her into moving to Miami.

It appears Esmeralda was also a devoted Jehovah witness, and Luis told me that to get her to Miami, he promised her he would join the church, which he did.

Next, Luis and Esmeralda bought a home in Miami.

It was a small older cement style house in the predominately Spanish area of Miami, located on 1737 SW 10th Street.

Over the next few years, Luis completely renovated the house.

However, as the money came in, we started noticing a psychological change in Luis. The more money he made the quicker he spent it. Where the money went was anyone’s guess, and Luis then became an Elder, in the Jehovah Witness church.

Luis and Esmeralda had a son; Edison Cantos and they also had a daughter.

By 1990, Luis’s first son, Luis Cantos II, nicknamed “Tuto”, came to Miami from Puerto Rico. He moved in with Luis and Esmeralda, while going to school.

Tuto was a very handsome young man with a pleasing personality to match. He worked part time for Luis while going to school in Miami.

Tuto was a talented mechanic, so I also took him under my wing to teach him whatever I could in the rebuilding business.

My son Jack, who was also working for us at API was about the same age as Tuto so they got along well.

Our company API was now channeling all the assembly and rebuilding business to Luis, and he in turn was required to bill us for work done.

While Luis also was an excellent mechanic, he proved to be a very poor administrator, and keeping track of anything in his operation was just an impossible task for him.

What was worse was that he wouldn’t listen to anyone. He started taking offense against any advice given to him.

When he was requested to put information into the company computer system, he would say, “We don’t need a computer. If you need to know something, just ask me.”

It was frustrating for us, and it was apparent that money Luis making had affected him adversely.

Luis’s company existed only because API supported it and overlooked all Luis’s inefficiencies.

We all worked around the inefficiencies because of my earlier promise to Luis.

We determined that Luis simply didn’t have the mental capability to run a business, nor did he have the mental capacity to use wisely all the money he was earning.

As the years went by, the situation with Luis deteriorated. We tried our best to teach Luis the importance of keeping records that were needed, but it appeared he had no desire to do any of it. He wanted to run the business, just like all small businesses run in Latin America.

By the 1990's Luis was earning more than $1000.00 per week, which was a considerable sum of money. We all could see, for whatever reason, Luis’s need for more money was getting out of hand. As he was spending money faster than he was earning it.

I thought possibly he was donating his money to the Jehovah Witness church, but when I asked him, he said no.

Every few weeks Luis would request private meetings with me, and at every meeting Luis would tell me a different story of woe.

He constantly complained about his son Tuto’s lying and he always ended the meeting by saying he was a poor man and needed more money.

According to Luis, his son Tuto was probably getting involved in drugs, and he had become a chronic liar to both Luis and his wife Esmiralda. Luis said that Tuto was using his personality to do bad things. It was a constant source of problems at home, as Tuto was living in their house, so there was aways constant daily friction.

In 1991, I discovered that my Partner Don Chait had embezzled our company, and he had also stolen funds from every possible source within our operation.

That included stealing the money from the workers’ compensation fund as well as tax money put aside for property taxes that we jointly owned.

I had always known that my partner Don had a lot of obvious psychological problems, and I also knew that he supported a wife who was a heavy drug user.

It now appeared those problems, along with his alcoholism, were far more serious than I had ever anticipated.

In 1991, my son Jack said he wanted to move up to New England, get married and start a family. Jack told me he was leaving just as we discovered the embezzlement.

At that point I realized I would have to close API and bring some kind of legal action against my partner Don.

My son Jack agreed to stay in Miami for a few extra months to assist me in closing API down.

In 1992 I brought a civil lawsuit against my partner Don, and rather than go to trial, Don threw his keys on my desk and just walked away, but not before he quit claiming all our joint venture property.

I closed Automotive Parts Industries, but I retained API Marine Corp. My intentions were to start a new company rebuilding military electrical parts, while still utilizing all the API employees and assets.

Before he left, my son Jack developed a computer program for me to use in running a military parts business.

We named the new corporation CME Arma Inc.

I had a meeting with Luis and explained the situation to him.

With the closing of API there was no reason to continue his operation.

I suggested that he move his entire operation into the API building at 4500 NW 36 Avenue, and close down his company AAA Auto Electric.

I felt guilty that I would no longer be able to administrate or fund his company.

To compensate for closing his operation, I told Luis that I would give him 20% of any profits we made with the new company CME Arma. I knew I would need someone like Luis to manage the shop operation.

Luis agreed, and the transition went very smoothly, we started doing business as CME Arma, with Luis running the rebuilding and manufacturing.

It was at this point in 1992 that my wife Katherine had hit the glass ceiling, while working for MSAS, a large British freight forwarding company.

I suggested she come and manage what was left of our API Marine operation and our Caterpillar starter kit business. My intention was to have Katherine eventually take over as CEO of the new company CME Arma, as a woman owned business.

Now that we were all in the same building, I started to notice how badly Luis operated.

Whenever a qualified person applied for a job Luis turned him down.

It became apparent that he would never hire anyone that might know more than he did. Also, I received several complaints that Luis was treating some of our employees badly.

By the end of 1992, my wife Katherine came to run the new Company, CME Arma Inc, as well as API Marine.

In 1992 Luis earned a base salary of about $60,000.00 a year and with bonuses brought him to over $100,000.00 a year.

In 1995 Luis’s son Tuto who was also working for us, married a Cuban girl named Annie. Luis said he hoped that Tuto marrying Annie would stop him from lying so much.

But we found that Annie was in the real estate sales business, and involved with mortgage fraud. It turned out Annie was a bigger liar than Tuto.

Annie was proud of her involvement in real estate fraud and told us so.

By 1995, CME Arma had started quoting directly to NATO as well as the U.S. government. Luis’s son Tuto was involved in doing some of the quoting for us, but Katherine became concerned that his lying would get us into serious trouble with the government.

In 2001 Katherine caught Tuto lying to the government, and because of it he quit the company.

Luis then told us that Tuto and Annie were getting a divorce after Tuto showed up at their house with his new Mexican girlfriend and her two kids.

Katherine and I always remained friendly with Tuto, and Katherine assisted him in obtaing a position running a large American automotive parts rebuilding factory in Mexico.

One week before Tuto was to leave for Mexico he was in a car accident with a borrowed car. The police found cocaine in his possession, and arrested him.

What happened with the police after that is anyone’s guess.

Because Tuto Lied so much, and because all the Cantos’s names are all so similar, whenever he was or arrested, he would change the way his name was written.

Sometimes he was Luis Edison Cantos II. But his primary name was Luis Edison Cantos, the same as his father Luis Edison Cantos

So Tuto sometimes wrote his name, leaving the “II”, but sometimes he was also using his father’s social security number.

Tuto’s name was never written the same in the police computers, and it’s still hard to differentiate between the two people.

Tuto moved to Brownsville Texas, lived in a company provided house and he commuted daily into Mexico. It was an excellent and well-paid position.

Tuto stayed in touch with me from Mexico, but I started to detect he was getting involved with the wrong people. I became concerned he would end up in jail or worse, and I told him so.

Now back to Luis,

In 2000 Luis received along with his salary a bonus of $75,000.00

In 2001 we sold what was left of our API Marine division for $90,000.00. We gave Luis 20% of the proceeds. Luis also received a bonus of $100,000.00

In 2002 Luis received a bonus of $25,000.00 and he received a loan of $25,000.00.

In 2003 Luis received a bonus of $75,000 and a loan of $30,000.00.

This was first year of our S Corp filing.

In 2004 Luis had his base salary plus $ 75,000.00 and another $37,000.00 in loans.

In November 2004 Luis said the IRS was hounding him for taxes he had not paid, and he needed to borrow an additional $25,000 00. We lent him the money and put him in touch with Deede Weithorn, who was our accountant. We asked her to help resolve Luis’s IRS problem. Deede later told us that Luis did not do anything she had told him to do.

In 2005 Luis received a bonus of $20,000.00.

In 2006 Luis received a bonus of $85,000.00, and the IRS requested us to levy his wages.

In 2007 Luis received a bonus of $50,000.00 plus a loan of $25,000.00.

Did we know Luis was screwing us around, yes we knew it, but he was an integral part of our military rebuilding business and finding a replacement at the time was out of the question.

One morning Luis came to me looking very distraught, he said the drug dealer, the one whose car Tuto had damaged, had threatened to kill Luis and his wife unless they gave him $10,000.00.

It sounded like a cock and bull story to me, but Luis wanted a $10,000.00 loan and against Katherine’s wishes we gave it to him.

In late 2007 we heard that Luis’s son Tuto was back in Florida working for a company called Sunshine Rebuilders in Pompano Beach. It appears he had left Mexico under bad circumstances.

We then noticed Tuto had registered with the government under the name LEC stating he was a black owned company.

We followed up and found he was now selling bogus parts to the government. We knew his father Luis also knew what was going on.

In 2007 we had a $35,000.00 customer order. It was an item made of copper which is easily sold for scrap. We found that our merchandise had been stolen. Everyone in the company told us they thought Luis had stolen it. When we discussed it with Luis, his English language seemed to falter, and I found it difficult if not impossible to talk to him.

Luis said that he knew who stole the merchandise and he promptly fired one of our Cuban employees.

The poor innocent guy kept calling the company up wanting to know why he was fired. When he was told, he offered to take a lie detector test.

Katherine filed a theft report with the police and that was all we could do.

In 2008 Luis received a bonus of $50,000.00. He never mentioned that his son Tuto was back in Florida.

We opted not to say anything to Luis about our knowing what Tuto was doing.

However, as we suspected trouble was on the horizon. Louis wanted to borrow an additional $27,000.00 but I refused, telling him he was already earning more than 80% of the U.S. Population. He was mad. Luis again said, “He was a poor man.”

I must mention that besides his earnings, we paid Luis’s insurance and the payments on his car, as well as the gasoline he used, and several other perks as well.

In mid-2008 one of our employees named Felipe Tabora asked us to talk to us, Felipe had worked for us for several years assembling alternators.

Felipe advised us that he was filing a Workers Compensation claim.

He said he had hurt his back.

Filipe was really a nice young fellow and I detected that Luis had put him up to filing the claim.

He sheepishly told us it was nothing personal as we had always treated him well. We could tell his conscience was really bothering him.

Although Felipe was an important employee and our friend, he had been trained by Luis, and was also Luis’s friend.

Late in the year 2008 Luis started taking mornings off. He said his wife was going crazy and he was taking her for psychiatric treatments.

He said he would need several mornings a week off for her to go to therapy. It was obvious something was going on, Luis was lying and we just had to wait and see.

On January 9, 2009, Luis came into work very agitated. He said he wanted us to buy him out.

I told him we had no reason to buy him out. Luis said we had always cheated on him. I guess he forgot what the company had paid him and done for him.

I told Luis to calm down and I asked his son Edison, who also worked for us, to drive his father Luis to his home as he was agitated and in no condition to drive.

I told Edison to keep Luis there until he calmed down. (Note ** we had employed Luis’s son Edison at a very good salary because he was Luis’s son. ( that was even though he could do nothing ).

Luis never came back to work, and it soon became obvious why.

We started receiving telephone calls from our customers, asking who a company called Metro Engine Tech was?

It appeared someone had our computer information, and was contacting all our customers.

Katherine did a little research and we found out that Tuto and Luis with another partner had opened

a business called Metro Engine Tech to compete with us, as well as sell directly to the government.

One of their employees doing government sales was a fellow named Jeffrey Perez who we trained with us at CME.

At the same time, they employed Filipe our former alternator assembler that had brought the Worker’s Compensation claim against us. Apparently he was now suddenly better.

Then another of our key employees soon quit CME to work for Luis.

That’s when my wife Katherine found on the internet that Luis’s house was being foreclosed on.

It appears that he had re-financed it 3 times for double what it was worth, probably doing it with the assistance of Tuto’s wife Annie, because she was a specialist in doing mortgage fraud.

Katherine also found that Luis had filed for personal bankruptcy.

We were not particularly worried about Tuto competing with us with the government, as we all knew that sooner or later he would get caught lying and the government would eventually prosecute him.

However, I was concerned that Luis had been able to feed information to Tuto, about our business.

Our suspicions were that Tuto had worked a deal with another company called Metro Engine Tech, and he was already doing business there.

We suspected correctly that Luis was now joining up with them.

By monitoring the Government Bids, and reports from our customers, we saw that Tuto was contacting every one of our customers.

We knew what was going on, but we wanted to get some more details to see if there was something didn't know, or if there were grounds for us bringing a law suit against Luis.

Also, we didn't really know the extent of the theft from CME by either Luis or Tuto, or both.

We hired a private investigator named Steven Roadruck that we had known from our old Miami Fishing Club days.

Steve found out that Luis had mortgaged his home for over $300,000.00, then refinanced it several times until the market dropped and he was in foreclosure for $397.000.00.

What Luis did with all the money no one knows.

We have hired a new employee named Oscar Fernandez. Oscar worked for Sunshine Rebuilders in

Pompano when Tuto had left Mexico and was also working there.

Oscar told us that there never was a $10,000.00 repair on the drug dealers’ car, the money was used for bail money for Tuto. It was all a lie by Luis. Oscar says Tuto was jailed in Mexico for stealing $31,000.00 from the company that employed him.

Katherine, with assistance from a friend in the Monroe Sheriffs Dept, found that Tuto was now using the alias Michael Maldini.

Also there also appeared to be a warrant out for the arrest of Luis Cantos II.

Our investigator said the warrants were open, so perhaps this was the reason Tuto was using an alias, or perhaps there was a more serious reason we don’t know of.

We then learned that while Luis was still working for us, he had sabotaged at least two projects, but fortunately we were able to rectify the problems.

Before Luis left us, he oversaw rebuilding of 6 engines to be sent to a company that was selling them to a government agency.

Luckily, we had the engines tested, and found that they all failed, due to Luis’s sabotage.

It was apparent that Luis tried to the best of his ability to sabotage CME and he financially hurt us.

Our investigator Steve Roadruck took secret pictures of the Metro Engine Tech operation and we could clearly see baskets of our merchandise that were stolen from CME, but there was little we could do about it.

Steve’s investigation also found that Luis had filed for bankruptcy in 2009, stating that he had not earned money in 2008, when he had earned way over $100,000.00.

We heard no more from them. It appears Luis had forgotten to tell the attorney that he was filing for bankruptcy.

Steve Roadruck asked us if we wanted his investigator to “Dumpster Dive” or look for evidence in the trash at Metro Engine Tech.

We said he should try it.

We then had a visit from an agent of the government, Mr. Tom Errion.

Tom asked if we were dumpster diving at Metro Engine Tech, it appears the government was also looking in Metro Engine Tech’s garbage for evidence.

As of 2010, agent Tom Errion told us that Tuto and Metro Engine Tech has officially been closed by the Government, and many contracts that they had shipped were canceled.

Tom had also arrested Tuto and our former employee Jeffry Perez, and they were now debarred from doing business with the government.

Luis, we were told had gotten wind of the government raid and fled to the Dominican Republic.

He did that two weeks before Tuto and Jeffery were arrested.

We have not tried to check on Luis in the Dominican Republic. But we understand he is involved in rebuilding parts there.

Then on Feb 20, 2013, we received by certified mail a handwritten note to CME Arma. It had the name Luis Cantos hand written and the address 142 SW 63 Ave. Miami, nothing more.

On March 24, 2014, our plant manager Eduardo Rios (Who once worked under Luis) informed us that he received a phone call from Luis in Miami. Luis offered to sell some alternator parts he had. He

Told Eduardo they were from a company in Georgia. Luis also asked how I was, and said he wanted to stop by and see me.

Eduardo advised Luis we would need some photos of the merchandise he was offering.

We checked around and found out that a Company in Georgia, had indeed sent Luis 200 military alternators to be rebuilt by Louis in the Dominican Republic. We were told Luis rebuilt 60 pieces only.

For whatever reason the remaining 140 alternators were never returned to the states now Luis was attempting to sell them to CME as used cores.

In total Luis offered us alternator part #2184AC alternators and 200-amp Niehoff alternators all disassembled for .70 cents per lb. located in the Dominican Republic.

As of April 2, 2014, I contacted CID investigator Luis Hernandez who took over for agent Tom Errion. Tom had since retired.

The new agent Luis Hernandez arrested Tuto and Jeffery Perez in 2013.

Officer Hernandez said they have both plead guilty to several counts of mail fraud and cheating the U.S. government.

It appears Luis Cantos is going to hide in the Dominican Republic for 4 years, out of reach of the Government.

Both Tuto and Jeffery Perez have been fined and imprisoned.

To reduce their sentence, Tuto has tried claiming CME is selling Chinese goods to the Government.

Officer Hernandez believed him and a CME employee, Gary Rowe, was asked to wear a wire to

Prosecute CME.

CME was proven innocent.