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Accused Hialeah Ballot Broker Takes Plea Deal

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A Hialeah woman accused of being an absentee ballot broke, or boletera, has accepted a plea deal from prosecutors.

Deisy Cabrera avoided jail time and was sentenced to a year of probation which could be terminated at the half way point.

In notebooks collected by investigators, Cabrera had names and addresses of more than 500 voters who were mostly elderly Hispanics who live in Hialeah. The lists, titled "Deisy's Voters," reportedly included information as to whether the voter was illiterate or was blind, deaf or had Alzheimer's.

In 2008, she allegedly received more than $9,000 in payments from more than half a dozen judicial candidates. Cabrera worked as a campaign worker for three of the candidates but what they paid her was about half of what she listed in her notes,

Investigators say Cabrera didn't work alone. She reportedly was a part of a political apparatus with access to updated absentee voter information from Miami-Dade County's Election Department and kept directives written by others to visit particular groups of voters or to take others to early-voting polling places.

She also kept contact information for the campaigns for which she worked, including those of former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and state Sen. Rene García.

Last July, acting on a tip police stopped Cabrera and found she had 12 absentee ballots belonging to other voters in her possession.

Cabrera had been charged with one count of absentee ballot fraud, a third degree felony, and two misdemeanor counts of possessing more than two ballots which belong to other voters.

As part of the deal, prosecutors dropped the felony charge and Cabrera pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charges.

In court her lawyer lambasted the the media for its portrayal of her like "lamb to the slaughter" while those behind the voter fraud in the county were not prosecuted.

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