The Accountant Who Wouldn’t Die

He defied the attempts to kill him

6 min readMay 22

In the 1990s, Miami, Florida was THE place to be. With its diverse population, beautiful white sandy beaches, stunning women in bikinis, Latin music, wealthy residents, and (almost) year-round sunshine. It was the perfect environment for hustlers and grifters lured by Miami’s many promises.

Not everyone was happy

But Miami had not been good to Jorge Delgado, one of the thousands of Cuban immigrants in the city. He couldn’t catch a break or support his family. His wife worked for a CPA named Marcello “Marc” Schiller who had come to the United States from Argentina when he was a child. When she told him of her husband’s plight, Schiller offered Delgado a job representing his CPA firm.

Delgado did such a good job, the two men became friends and business partners. Schiller even helped to set up Delgado in business. Delgado knew everything about the CPA’s businesses, a disastrous mistake for which Schiller would pay dearly.

One of Schiller’s not-quite-legal businesses was making bogus claims to Medicare, which made him a millionaire.

The fateful meeting

Delgado worked out at a local bodybuilders’ gym, the Sun Gym, which was owned by John Mese, also a CPA. There, Jorge met and became friends with Danny Lugo, a muscle-bound hustler from New York.

When Delgado told Lugo about his well-to-do business partner, fast-talking Lugo decided Schiller was a perfect mark for his latest scam. However, when Lugo proposed the deal to Schiller, the accountant blew him off and later said he thought Lugo was “full of shit.”

Delgado shared some of the accountant’s business information with Lugo, who decided Schiller had cheated Delgado out of at least a hundred thousand dollars. And he came up with a plan to get that and much more from the hapless CPA.

A calamity of catastrophic proportions was barrelling towards Schiller like a category 6 hurricane, but he had no warning and never saw it coming.