Miami-Dade Cop George Price sentenced to 48 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release

U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez sentenced former Miami-Dade Cop George Price to 48 months in prison. The court also sentenced him to three years of supervised release. Price participated in a wire fraud scheme by filing false police reports for several shady credit repair businesses.

Price previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1349.

As MFI-Miami wrote about back in August, Federal prosecutors  indicted the former Miami-Dade Cop and Fatima Ruiz, a/k/a “Fatima Cabana,” over the summer.

Indictment says both are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and mail fraud. Price and Ruiz face up to twenty years in prison. A third defendant named in the indictment, Miami-Dade Police Officer Rafael Duran, was previously arrested on April 2, 2015.

The Mail Fraud Scheme

The indictment states Price and his cohorts ran a scheme creating false police reports for individuals operating credit repair businesses. A co-conspirator would provide Price with identifying information of credit business customers. Price would then create false police reports using the customers’ identifying information.

The police reports would falsely represent that the customers had reported to the Miami-Dade Police Department facts consistent with having been victims of identity theft.

Price would cause the false police reports to become official records of the Miami-Dade Police Department. The false reports would then be transmitted to credit reporting agencies. This would induce the bureaus to remove negative items from the credit histories of the alleged victims.

Price created the false police reports in order to promote the success of the credit businesses and in return would receive payment from his co-conspirators.

The indictment further alleges Ruiz would provide funds to a co-conspirator who acted as an intermediary Price. The intermediary in turn would pay former Miami-Dade Cop Price for his participation in the scheme. According to the superseding indictment, Ruiz would also allegedly transmit to the credit reporting agencies letters claiming that customers of the credit businesses had been victims of identity theft. Ruiz would include false police reports to support the claims made in these letters.

The superseding indictment also alleges that Ruiz conducted a similar scheme while operating her own separate credit repair business. According the superseding indictment, Ruiz would try to repair customer credit by sending letters to the credit reporting agencies claiming that her customers had been victims of identity theft. Ruiz would include false police reports created by Price along with the letters.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov.