Gov. Rick Scott slightly backed away Wednesday from his attack ad that links Charlie Crist to a convicted Ponzi schemer's crime.
Scott suggested his commercial wasn't really saying that Crist was an active participant in the fraud, but it's "absolutely true" that Crist, due to his political flip-flopping, "swindled" the narrator in the ad, who's also a victim of Scott Rothstein's Ponzi scheme.
"This individual was a victim of both Scott Rothstein and Charlie Crist. Both of them promised things, and they didn't come through," Scott said Wednesday during a Miami campaign stop.
"Charlie said he was a Ronald Reagan Republican. He was against tax increases. He was against raising your tuition. And he did both," Scott said. "Charlie was a Republican and then an independent then a Democrat."
But Scott's ad, narrated by an anonymous Republican whose identity was unmasked in Wednesday's Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, says nothing about Ronald Reagan, tuition, taxes or Crist's political party.
Instead, the ad, narrated by Fort Lauderdale investor Dean Kretschmar, tightly focuses on what most people associate with its title: a "swindle." Throughout the ad, Kretschmar talks about Rothstein, Crist, political contributions, a disputed allegation about judges for sale and the Ponzi scheme that made some families go "bankrupt."
Kretschmar was one of those victims. Kretschmar's investor group, called Razorback, was able to recoup most of its losses because it sued deep-pocketed TD Bank, which Rothstein used in the scheme and which Rothstein then turned on.
Kretschmar's lawsuit never mentioned Crist. Yet Kretschmar says without explanation in his ad: "I got swindled by both Rothstein and Charlie."
Crist said Wednesday during a stop in Boca Raton that Scott is lying and that the newspaper report "exposes the sheer falsehood of that ad."
He has said in the past that Scott is trying to distract voters from his record managing Columbia/HCA, which was socked with a Medicare-fraud fine in the 1990s.
Asked if he believed Crist participated in the Ponzi scheme itself, Scott wouldn't say.
"What I can tell you is the ad speaks for itself," Scott said. "Charlie and Scott Rothstein did the same thing. They took money from somebody and they lied to him."
Here's what Crist did as far as "taking money:" he accepted a single $500 campaign contribution from Kretschmar in 2006.
Here's what Rothstein did: he oversaw a $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme — the fourth-largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. Rothstein ultimately defrauded scores of investors of $360 million.