George Mejia is no Pablo Escobar.
But they have one thing in common: they were both betrayed by a now 74-year-old informant – one whose work for Hialeah Police is being attacked by lawyers seeking to have convictions vacated or sentences reduced.
A month after NBC6 Investigates revealed evidence the informant violated his contract with police, Miami-Dade assistant state attorney Jared Octala cited that report in persuading a judge to end probation 10 years early for Mejia, one of 115 alleged cocaine traffickers the informant helped lure to Hialeah, according to police reports.
“This is involved with the confidential informant that was in Hialeah which I’m sure you read the news articles that have come out,” Octala told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jason Bloch, explaining why the state wanted to drop the remaining 10 years from Mejia’s 12-year probation sentence for cocaine trafficking.
George Mejia
Bloch said he had not seen or read the NBC6 report and wanted to know more.
“It doesn’t just revolve around this case. It’s conduct from all the cases I’ve got involved with this confidential informant,” Octala said. “There’s been enough attention that’s been brought to these cases and to the state’s attention to begin to investigate and review them.”
Bloch probed further during the Aug. 18 hearing.
“You’ve heard allegations of wrongful government conduct when it came to the police department and its agents in the form of informants, is that correct?” Bloch asked. “Allegations?”
“Allegations of it, yes,” Octala replied.
So Bloch agreed to end Mejia’s probation, writing on his order that “evidence has emerged that the prosecution was premised upon potential ‘outrageous government conduct.'”
The informant, who we’ll call “Jose” to protect him and his family, wound up collecting $9,750 of the $39,326 confiscated from Mejia in that December 2020 sting, according to confidential police records reviewed by NBC6 Investigates.
Over more than six years, Hialeah Police paid Jose more than $640,000 – 24% of the money seized from the suspects he trapped, those records reveal.
The remaining $2.1 million was supposed to go to the City of Hialeah to pay for police equipment and services.
But in a June 2025 affidavit charging former Hialeah Police chief Sergio Velazquez with grand theft, money laundering and organized fraud, investigators allege $3.6 million in city funds is missing or unaccounted for during Velazquez’s tenure as chief from 2012 to November 2021. The affidavit states $1 million of that cash was confiscated in drug forfeiture cases, including some involving Jose, police and court records show. Velazquez has pled not guilty.
Miami-Dade Corrections
Miami-Dade Corrections
Booking photo of Sergio Velasquez
Such operations, known as “reverse stings,” are legal, as long as they do not involve entrapment, coercion, threats and the like. And courts have ruled confidential informants may get a cut of the cash seized, as long as it’s not contingent on their testimony in court or a successful prosecution.
But in 2023, assistant public defender Matlin Brown got prosecutors to drop charges against one of her clients and three co-defendants after accusing Jose in her motion to dismiss of lying about his connection to the supposed broker who referred the suspects to him.
Hialeah Police said they and Jose did not know who that broker was, but Brown’s client noted he was of similar age and resembled and spoke with the same Colombian accent as Jose, according to Brown’s motion to dismiss based on entrapment and outrageous police conduct.
Brown investigated further and discovered the broker was actually Jose’s brother.
Both brothers were arrested in 1987 in Operation Pisces, what was then the largest undercover cocaine trafficking and money laundering investigation in history, according to the DEA. Jose flipped on the Medellin cartel and served only six years in prison, followed by placement in witness protection; his brother though was convicted at trial and sentenced 25 years in prison.
Jose, through his attorney, has declined comment; as did Mejia’s attorney.
Brown is now asking another judge to vacate the conviction and 15-year sentence imposed on another of the traffickers lured to Hialeah by Jose. A hearing is scheduled for next month.
Attorneys in at least two other cases are also seeking relief for their clients arrested in Hialeah Police reverse stings.
In one, the state questioned whether Jose was the informant involved, and a judge agreed there was insufficient evidence to vacate the conviction. It is now on appeal.
Brown said there should be more justice to come for those Jose may have set up.
“There are people who are still actively suffering,” she told NBC6. “We’re not even talking about criminal records and probation, but people who are actively serving time, hard time over these cases, over what this informant did, what the Hialeah Police department did. It’s incredibly unfair.”
A spokesperson with the state attorney’s office said the office is not investigating all the cases Jose brought, saying it does not even know the identity of the confidential informants used in the Hialeah Police cases.
Octala told NBC6 he meant to say he was “reviewing” cases brought to him, not “investigating” all the cases. He would not comment on what his review has found so far.
The state attorney’s office has not responded to repeated emails asking them to explain the difference between “reviewing” and “investigating.”