ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – A former Florida state Republican senator was charged Thursday with three criminal counts involving a sham candidate intended to siphon votes away from a Democratic incumbent. An arrest warrant says Frank Artiles, the former senator from the Miami area, gave more than $44,000 to the fake candidate in the 2020 election. That candidate, Alex Rodriguez, has the same last name as the then-Democratic incumbent, Jose Javier Rodriguez. He ran as an independent in a three-way race state Senate race, which was won by Republican Ileana Garcia by just 32 votes. Then it was revealed Artiles used money from his political committee to hire a former Playboy model and Hooters girl as a consultant.

A search warrant is being executed Wednesday at the Palmetto Bay home of resigned Florida Sen. Frank Artiles as part of an investigation into whether he illegally funded a sham election candidate. In 2016 he was elected to the state Senate. AdAccording to the Miami Herald, Artiles bragged about installing Alex Rodriguez in the Senate race in several public settings. “That is me, that was all me,” Artiles said of the South Florida Senate race. In 2017, he resigned from the state Senate after using racial slurs in a conversation with two Black legislators in a Tallahassee bar.