R. Alexander Acosta, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jonathan I. Solomon, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami Field Office, and John Timoney, Chief of the City of Miami Police Department announced that former City of Miami Police Officer Geovani Nunez was sentenced today on a charge of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance, in violation of Title 21, United States Code, Section 846, for his role in protecting what he believed was the delivery of a multi-kilogram shipment of cocaine. Nunez and fellow officer Jorge Hernandez previously pled guilty to this charge, which arose from an eight-month undercover investigation jointly conducted by the United States Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the cooperation and assistance of the City of Miami Police Department’s Internal Affairs Unit.
In a morning hearing in Miami, Judge Patricia A. Seitz sentenced Nunez to 135 months in prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release, and ordered Nunez to pay $28,000 in restitution to the FBI. Nunez’s co-defendant, Jorge Hernandez, is scheduled to be sentenced before Judge Seitz in Miami on January 8, 2009.
As shown in the guilty plea and sentencing proceedings, during the course of this investigation, Nunez, a 13-year veteran of the City of Miami Police Department, provided a variety of illegal services to an individual who represented himself as having a trucking business involved in transporting stolen merchandise and narcotics. During the course of his criminal activities, Nunez used his marked police car to protect the delivery of what he was told was 4 separate large loads of stolen merchandise, including computers and televisions, and three cocaine deliveries, totaling a purported twelve (12) kilograms of cocaine. In reality, this individual was assisting the FBI, and the purported criminal activities were all staged operations done as part of the investigation. Nunez recruited his co-defendant into the scheme when another officer was needed to protect and facilitate increasingly larger and more valuable purported illegal shipments. The defendants were paid in cash at the conclusion of each criminal episode that they participated in, with Nunez receiving approximately $28,000 in cash for his criminal services.
Mr. Acosta commends the efforts of the numerous special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and City of Miami Internal Affairs officers who have been working on this investigation. The case is being prosecuted by Senior Litigation Counsel Edward N. Stamm.
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 http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at http://www.flsd.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.
