\u201cThis is involved with the confidential informant that was in Hialeah which I\u2019m sure you read the news articles that have come out,\u201d Octala told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jason Bloch, explaining why the state wanted to drop the remaining 10 years from Mejia\u2019s 12-year probation sentence for cocaine trafficking.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/092525-George-Mejia.png\")
<\/p>\n
George Mejia<\/p>\n
Bloch said he had not seen or read the NBC6 report and wanted to know more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t just revolve around this case. It\u2019s conduct from all the cases I\u2019ve got involved with this confidential informant,\u201d Octala said. \u201cThere\u2019s been enough attention that\u2019s been brought to these cases and to the state\u2019s attention to begin to investigate and review them.”<\/p>\n
Bloch probed further during the Aug. 18 hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve 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. \u201cAllegations?”<\/p>\n
\u201cAllegations of it, yes,\u201d Octala replied.<\/p>\n
So Bloch agreed to end Mejia\u2019s probation, writing on his order that \u201cevidence has emerged that the prosecution was premised upon potential ‘outrageous government conduct.'”<\/p>\n
The informant, who we\u2019ll call \u201cJose\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Over more than six years, Hialeah Police paid Jose more than $640,000 \u2013 24% of the money seized from the suspects he trapped, those records reveal.<\/p>\n
The remaining $2.1 million was supposed to go to the City of Hialeah to pay for police equipment and services.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Booking](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/SERGIO-VELAZQUEZ-MUGSHOT.png\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tMiami-Dade Corrections<\/p>\n
\t\t\tMiami-Dade Corrections<\/p>\n
Booking photo of Sergio Velasquez<\/p>\n
Such operations, known as \u201creverse stings,\u201d 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\u2019s not contingent on their testimony in court or a successful prosecution.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Hialeah Police said they and Jose did not know who that broker was, but Brown\u2019s client noted he was of similar age and resembled and spoke with the same Colombian accent as Jose, according to Brown\u2019s motion to dismiss based on entrapment and outrageous police conduct.<\/p>\n
Brown investigated further and discovered the broker was actually Jose\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Jose, through his attorney, has declined comment; as did Mejia\u2019s attorney.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Attorneys in at least two other cases are also seeking relief for their clients arrested in Hialeah Police reverse stings.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Brown said there should be more justice to come for those Jose may have set up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are people who are still actively suffering,\u201d she told NBC6. \u201cWe\u2019re 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\u2019s incredibly unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson with the state attorney\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Octala told NBC6 he meant to say he was \u201creviewing\u201d cases brought to him, not \u201cinvestigating\u201d all the cases. He would not comment on what his review has found so far.<\/p>\n
The state attorney\u2019s office has not responded to repeated emails asking them to explain the difference between \u201creviewing\u201d and \u201cinvestigating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Mejia is no Pablo Escobar. But they have one thing in common: they were both betrayed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226,1168],"class_list":{"0":"post-734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-hialeah","9":"tag-hialeah-headlines","10":"tag-hialeah-news","11":"tag-nbc6-investigates"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}