SWEETWATER, Fla. – A Florida Highway Patrol trooper's dashboard camera video obtained by the Miami Herald shows the traffic stop of a Sweetwater police detective, accused of fraud involving fake license plates.
Octavio Oliu was arrested in February on charges of organized scheme to defraud and three counts of official misconduct after a trooper pulled him over for speeding and failure to stay in a single lane. The video released Wednesday shows the August 2013 traffic stop that started the investigation.
According to authorities, Oliu accumulated hundreds of SunPass violations with stolen license plates.
In the video, Oliu tells the trooper that he put the plate on his police-issued sports utility vehicle that morning and claimed the tag had come up clean on the National Crime Information Center database.
"Bro, we actually ran it on NCIC, literally ran it this morning," said Oliu.
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Oliu claimed he didn't know that the tag was stolen, but the trooper found several other unauthorized license plates inside his vehicle.
According to the newspaper, the tag on his SUV belonged to Oscar Marquez, who was arrested in August 2013 on suspicious of possessing stolen credit cards.
Charges were eventually dropped against Marquez, and his aunt got the truck he was driving that day back, but without its license plates.
According to the arrest report, she was told by police that the tag would not be returned. The woman then reported the tag stolen to police in Michigan.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation determined that Oliu used the stolen tag to accumulate 530 SunPass violations.
Oliu was placed on unpaid leave after his arrest and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
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