Honorable mention: Former Flagler Avenue financial kingpin Robert Lott
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NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Mayor Adam Barringer is Headline Surfer's 2012 "Newsmaker of the Year" for being embroiled in a second scandal involving allegations of using his elected position for financial gain with his private business holdings, the latest resulting in an ethics complaint file with the state. He also appointed a friend to the planning board who admitted in court to buying cocaine from an undercover police officer, voted $20,000 in CRA taxpayer funding for a boyhood friend to fix up his bar and cursed out a rookie cop who wouldn't let him drive through a closed side street before the start of the Christmas parade -- a cop who served in combat in Iraq.
Honorable mention goes to Robert Lott, former Flagler Avenue financial planner sued by an 82-year-old widow who claimed he swindled her out of $60,000. Lott, who, along with his wife, sought refuge in bankruptcy court from the widow and others of upwards of half a million dollars in debts related in part to the failed weekly Observer newspaper they ended up running out of their foreclosed Edgewater home, which they also lost.