The troubled Antioch Police Division faces one other blow, as a second police officer was convicted final week in a scheme to fraudulently acquire school levels for larger pay.
Morteza Amiri, 33, and 5 others from the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments falsely claimed they’d obtained bachelor’s levels in prison justice in a ploy to qualify for larger pay, the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Northern District of California mentioned in an announcement Friday.
However the officers truly employed another person to finish the programs on-line, unlocking raises and monetary incentives they’d not earned, prosecutors mentioned. The opposite 5 pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit wire fraud earlier this 12 months; Amiri’s case was the one one to go to trial.
Amiri was additionally caught up within the Antioch Police Division’s racist texting scandal in 2023.
In Might 2020, two days after the homicide of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Amiri texted one other officer about “riots in LA” over “the gorilla that died.”
In texts introduced at Amiri’s trial, he wrote to the particular person employed to take lessons that he would “pay you per class.”
“[D]on’t inform a soul about me hiring you for this,” he wrote. “[W]e can’t afford it getting leaked and me shedding my job.”
“I’m gonna rush order my diploma to get my pay increase bounce began,” he allegedly wrote.
The opposite 5 officers convicted within the conspiracy to defraud police departments had been Patrick Berhan, Amanda Theodosy a.okay.a. Nash, Ernesto Mejia-Orozco and Brauli Rodriguez Jalapa, who had been present or former members of the Pittsburg Police Division on the time, and Samantha Peterson of the Antioch Police Division, the U.S. lawyer’s workplace mentioned.
“Amiri engaged in a calculated conspiracy to defraud his police division of taxpayer funds. His actions had been a violation of the regulation and a grave betrayal of public belief,” mentioned Robert Tripp, a spokesman for the FBI.
“Amiri and his co-conspirators’ deception has no place in regulation enforcement. With this conviction, he now faces the implications of his actions.”
Every of Amiri’s two convictions comes with a most sentence of 20 years in jail. He’s scheduled to be tried in a associated case in February.
