A 27-year-old Honduran national who twice slipped onto a Pinellas County highway project using stolen identities is headed to federal prison. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced Cristian Daniel Diaz-Garcia to three years and two months behind bars after a jury convicted him of aggravated identity theft, falsely representing a Social Security number and making a false claim of U.S. citizenship.
Prosecutors say Diaz-Garcia used the bogus paperwork to land work on the Gateway Expressway construction contract in Pinellas County, a job that has now spawned a broader investigation into how workers were cleared for federally funded projects.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, Diaz-Garcia first applied for employment with Archer Western-de Moya Group Joint Venture II on Aug. 17, 2021, falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen on his I-9 form. After he was fired in 2022, authorities say he bought another person’s identifying information and, on Feb. 1, 2023, reapplied for the same job using that identity to get past the E-Verify system.
Multi-agency probe, construction project fallout
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations along with federal inspectors and local law enforcement, according to the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General and the Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General. The DOT-OIG has linked the prosecutions to the Gateway Expressway project in Pinellas County, noting that multiple workers were accused of using false identities…