Alvin Bernard, a former officer of the Miami Gardens Police Department, pleaded guilty in a federal court in the Southern District of Florida to having falsified information in order to obtain $63,900 in pandemic relief funds to which he was not entitled, as announced by the Department of Justice.
Bernard, a 38-year-old resident of Miami Gardens, was working as an officer with the Miami Gardens Police Department when, as the sole manager and authorized representative of Vanity Properties LLC, he submitted a loan application on behalf of the company to the Small Business Administration (SBA) under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program established by the CARES Act to assist businesses affected by the pandemic.
In that statement, Bernard declared that Vanity Properties had generated $127,881 in gross revenue during the 12 months prior to January 31, 2020, a figure that court records show to be false: the company had not generated that revenue.
Based on that fraudulent information, the SBA approved and electronically transferred $63,900 to the company's bank account.
Applicants for the EIDL program were required to certify, under penalty of perjury, that the information submitted—including business income—was truthful and accurate.
The federal prosecutor Jason A. Reding Quiñones was unequivocal in assessing the case: "Alvin Bernard was a sworn police officer tasked with upholding the law, but he lied to obtain federal relief funds intended for businesses harmed by the pandemic. His guilty plea makes him accountable for betraying public trust and stealing from a program funded by American taxpayers."
As part of the plea agreement, Bernard faces a maximum of two years in federal prison, but he also agreed to resign from the police force, surrender his certification as a law enforcement officer in the state of Florida, and permanently refrain from applying for any recertification.
The case was jointly investigated by the FBI Miami, the Office of the Inspector General of the SBA for the Eastern Region, and the Miami Field Office of the United States Secret Service.
This process adds to a series of convictions for COVID-19 fund fraud in South Florida that have specifically involved public officials and law enforcement agents, including employees of the Miami Police Department and Miami-Dade.
The Southern District of Florida has been one of the most active in the country in pursuing this type of fraud, and the Department of Justice has repeatedly emphasized that the public officials involved receive special attention due to the aggravating factor of breach of trust.
In July, Keegan Harricharan, a resident of Coral Springs, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars fraudulently obtained from COVID-19 relief programs, money that ultimately financed the conspiracy that led to the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
According to the investigation, Harricharan used funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, established under the CARES Act to assist small businesses during the pandemic, to finance part of the plot against the Haitian leader.
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