The previous police chief of Hialeah, Florida, was arrested Monday for allegedly defrauding town after a state regulation enforcement investigation uncovered hundreds of thousands in lacking money from the division’s narcotics unit.
Sergio Velazquez, the police chief of Hialeah from 2012 till 2021, is dealing with felony prices of grand theft, organized fraud, and structuring financial institution deposits to evade reporting necessities. Prosecutors allege he siphoned off a minimum of $600,000 from narcotics funds and seized money from 2020 to 2021, then tried to launder the cash by means of a number of financial institution accounts and a company entity he registered.
Though Velazquez is simply charged for alleged conduct over a roughly one-year interval, investigators say that they can not account for a number of million {dollars} extra that disappeared since 2015.
“This case revealed that Velazquez violated the belief and integrity anticipated of him as police chief,” Florida Division of Regulation Enforcement (FDLE) Particular Agent in Cost John Vecchio mentioned in a press convention Monday on the Miami-Dade State Lawyer’s Workplace.
The proof laid out in opposition to Velazquez is a very brazen instance of the perverse police incentives created by the drug battle and civil asset forfeiture, a device that permits police to grab money and property suspected of being related to felony exercise comparable to drug trafficking, even when the proprietor is not charged with a criminal offense.
In an arrest warrant and affidavit obtained by Miami public radio outlet WLRN, an FDLE agent mentioned the FDLE was first alerted to the alleged theft by the Hialeah police chief who took over the division after Velazquez was dismissed in 2021.
When the brand new chief opened a secure in his workplace, he found proof luggage with money associated to latest drug seizure instances—however tens of hundreds of {dollars} have been lacking.
An ensuing three-year FDLE investigation discovered that money had regularly disappeared from safes contained in the police chief’s administrative suite. That money got here from two sources: a city-funded “petty money” account for long-term narcotics investigations, and cash seized by means of civil asset forfeiture on account of these narcotics investigations.
When FDLE investigators checked the Hialeah Police Division’s requests for “petty money” funds in opposition to the bills filed by the narcotics unit over an 11-month interval in 2020 and 2021, greater than $300,000 was unaccounted for.
Velazquez’s arrest warrant says that from 2015 to 2021, his workplace requested funds for narcotics operations totaling $2.8 million. However investigators may solely match roughly $200,000 to reputable expenditures.
Moreover, $1 million was lacking from court-awarded civil asset forfeitures.
Civil liberties teams have lengthy argued that civil forfeiture creates perverse revenue incentives for police, and over time there have been loads of examples of officers who abused the method to rake in cash for his or her departments, or just stole to line their very own pockets.
In New York in 2023, an Albany County sheriff’s deputy was charged with stealing greater than $68,000 from the division’s federal forfeiture funds account.
Over in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 2020, $150,000 went “lacking” from the county drug job power’s asset forfeiture fund.
In 2021, federal prosecutors charged two former cops in Rohnert Park, California, with extorting cash and marijuana from motorists throughout visitors stops.
Quite a few police departments and district legal professional places of work have gotten into bother for utilizing asset forfeiture revenues as slush funds for frivolous bills and fancy swag.
The issue with having an enormous pile of illicit money, although, as any profitable drug trafficker may testify, is spending it with out getting caught.
On the similar time that cash saved disappearing from the Hialeah Police Division’s narcotics funds, FDLE investigators allege that Velazquez deposited $2,000,000 in money into private and enterprise accounts, splitting the deposits amongst a number of accounts and avoiding sums that might set off automated reporting necessities.
In response to the affidavit, Velazquez additionally registered a company and spent tens of hundreds of {dollars} from his enterprise accounts on luxurious watches and high-end manufacturers comparable to Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Versace.
As soon as Velazquez left workplace, the arrest warrant notes, the bookkeeping issues on the Hialeah Police Division all of a sudden stopped.
