A judge revoked bond today for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of a Florida teenager in his gated community, and ordered him to surrender himself in 48 hours.
Prosecutors had filed a motion today to revoke his bond, accusing Zimmerman of "deceiving" the court about his finances and his possession of a second passport, which he apparently acquired two weeks after the shooting.
"The court was led to believe that they didn't have a single penny," said prosecutor Bernie De La Rionda. "If this [the money] wasn't relevant to bond then why did they lie about it? I don't know what other words to use besides that it was a blatant lie."
The judge seemed to agree.
"They were well aware of the money that was available," Judge Kenneth Lester.
In recordings of conversations released today during a court hearing, Zimmerman and his wife, Shelly Zimmerman, cryptically talk about his second passport in a safety deposit box they shared.
Although one of his passports was due to expire in May, prosecutors said today, Zimmerman applied for a second passport, informing the State Department that the original had been lost lost or stolen.
In some of the phone calls between the two, she is at a credit union that was linked to his PayPal account and speaking to a teller. The prosecution said that despite being in jail, Zimmerman was "intimately involved in the deposit and transfer of money into various accounts."
In the conversations, prosecutors say, Zimmerman and his wife speak in code — reducing the amounts in their financial accounts by a factor of 1,000. Prosecutors said the couple knew that their jailhouse conversations were likely being recorded.
