City of Miami Police Officer Sentenced in Civil Rights and Identity Theft Case

Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida; John V. Gillies, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Miguel Exposito, Chief, City of Miami Police Department, announced that Miami Police Officer Christian Alvarez-Vega, 37, was sentenced to 13 months in prison for depriving an individual of his civil rights while acting under color of law, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 242, and possessing and using, without lawful authority, a means of identification of that same individual, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028(a)(7).

At the change of plea hearing on July 13, 2010, the defendant admitted that in the early morning hours of January 11, 2010, Alvarez-Vega, a 12-year veteran police officer, responded in his official capacity to an incident where the victim had been the passenger in a car crash. After Alvarez-Vega transported the victim in his police car, he found the victim’s bank card. Later, at approximately 3:30 a.m., Alvarez-Vega contacted the victim, claiming that he needed the victim’s bank “PIN” number as part of his official police investigation. The victim provided the information to him. Later that morning, Alvarez-Vega, still in uniform and driving his marked police car, and without consent from the victim, went to a supermarket ATM and used that bank card to withdraw $460 from the victim’s bank account.

Mr. Ferrer commended the officers of the City of Miami Police Department Internal Affairs Section Anti-Corruption Unit and the special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their work on this matter. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Susan R. Osborne and Jacqueline Arango.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida at www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.