Angelica Pacheco, a former Hialeah city councilwoman, was spared a prison term on Thursday after pleading guilty to falsifying information on her addiction treatment center’s emergency loan application to the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But a federal judge still gave Pacheco a three-year probationary sentence instead of the one year recommended by her defense lawyers and a federal prosecutor, saying she wanted to monitor her progress as the 40-year-old registered nurse seeks to get her life back on track. The judge also ordered Pacheco to pay back about $55,000 to the federal government on a Small Business Administration loan — funds that she mostly spent on personal expenses, not the treatment center’s payroll, as required by law.
“I’m not comfortable with a year of probation,” U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra said, adding that she would let Pacheco return to court in a year to determine if her probation should be terminated. “I want to see you back on your feet … and that you pay your restitution.”
Her journey in the justice system could have turned out much worse. In late January, on the eve of her federal trial in Miami, the Justice Department did an about-face and dropped major healthcare-fraud charges against Pacheco without explanation, cutting a plea deal with her on the charge of making false statements on her Paycheck Protection Program loan application in 2020.
At Thursday’s sentencing, Pacheco spoke about the “heartbreaking” ordeal of being charged in 2024, causing her suspension from the Hialeah City Council and the loss of her business.
“It was life-shattering for me and my family,” Pacheco said, breaking into tears. “I wish I could go back in time and do things differently, but that cannot be undone. I can only move forward, and be better and responsible from this day going forward.”
Pacheco was elected to the Hialeah City Council in November 2023 after she unsuccessfully ran three times. Following her federal indictment, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended her from office in 2024, citing the criminal case. The Hialeah City Council subsequently appointed Melinda De la Vega to fill the vacancy. In the most recent election cycle, William Marrero won the seat.
For Pacheco, the plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office has left her with a felony conviction barring her from political office. Sentencing guidelines called for zero to six months, but Justice Department trial attorney James Hayes and assistant federal public defenders Kathleen Mollison and Christian Dunham jointly recommended one year of probation with restitution.
Pacheco thanked the defense attorneys for extending her a “lifeline” and her family and friends who wrote letters of support. One longtime Miami-Dade social worker, who had met Pacheco when she was a pregnant 17-year-old mother of two in 2002, was mentioned during Thursday’s sentencing hearing.
“I have seen many people pass through the public assistance system,” Loyda Sanchez wrote in a letter to the judge. “Some give up. Some become complacent. Some repeat patterns. AngeIica did not. Angelica, with imperfections like any human being, has been a woman of drive, ethics, loyalty, and commitment to her family and her community.”
Angelica Pacheco, former Hialeah council member, leaves federal court in downtown Miami on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, after pleading guilty to lying on her pandemic loan application. The felony conviction means she cannot hold political office.
Lenders approved Pacheco’s loan under the Paycheck Protection Program as part of the CARES Act passed by Congress after the coronavirus swept the country in March 2020.
In her plea deal, Pacheco admitted that she provided false information to the Small Business Administration when it forgave the loan to her treatment center, Florida Life Recovery and Rehabilitation LLC, in February 2021.
Pacheco admitted that she falsely represented on a certification form that “Florida Life used funds received from the PPP loan only on eligible expenses including to pay $54,946 in payroll costs,” according to the charge. “When in truth and in fact, and as the defendant knew, Florida Life did not use the PPP loan funds only on eligible expenses and did not pay $54,946 in payroll costs, but instead, much of the funds were spent on unauthorized personal expenditures,” the charge says.
Initially, in June 2024, Pacheco was charged with conspiring to commit healthcare fraud and related charges accusing her of falsely billing private insurers millions of dollars for medically unnecessary services at her addiction treatment center in Hialeah.
She was accused of using her businesses and four clinical laboratories to submit $19.1 million in bogus bills for substance-abuse therapy, urine and blood tests and other services to multiple insurance companies between July 2017 and August 2020, according to a grand-jury indictment.
In total, insurers such as Aetna, Cigna and other firms paid Florida Life and the labs about $4.3 million, which Pacheco and unnamed co-conspirators, including Florida Life’s medical director, pocketed for themselves, the indictment says.
Pacheco’s original case was an offshoot of an investigation into a former Miami-Dade doctor, Jose Santeiro, who served a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for his role in a criminal case similar to hers. Santeiro, who was licensed to practice medicine between 1995 and 2022, was the medical director of Pacheco’s Florida Life business during the time frame of the activity in her indictment, according to court and public records.
Santeiro, 63, of Miami Lakes, was found guilty in March 2022 of nine counts of healthcare fraud, including conspiring with others to bill $112 million to private insurers for detox services that were never provided or were medically unnecessary at two substance-abuse facilities in Broward County.