Coral Gables police officer pleads not guilty to federal bribery, fraud, perjury charges
CORAL GABLES - Edwin Pagan, a Coral Gables police officer for 27 years, has pleaded not guilty to eight federal charges, including bribery, fraud and perjury, after the indictment by the grand jury was unsealed Monday.
Pagan was relieved of his duties without pay pending an internal affairs investigation by the agency after he was indicted Friday in the Southern District of New New York in Manhattan.
Also Monday, he appeared before Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron and was granted bond of $50,000. Pagan is restricted to South Florida and portions of New York. He also was required to surrender all firearms and not handle any weapons.
The charges are two counts of conspiracy to bribe a public official, conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, honest service wire fraud and four counts of perjury.
The charges against Pagan, 52, stem from defense testimony he gave at the trial of two former Drug Enforcement Agency supervisors in Miami, John Costanzo Jr. and Manny Recio, who were convicted on Nov. 8 of leaking confidential information to defense attorneys as part of a bribery conspiracy that prosecutors said imperiled high-profile cases and the lives of overseas drug informants.
Pagan has been an officer with the Coral Gables Police Department since June 1997. He spent four years with the South Florida Money Laundering Task Force as a detective and from 2009 to 2020 with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as a deputized special agent.
Prosecutors allege Pagan committed the crimes between October 2018 and January 2020 as a Coral Gables officer and DEA task force officer.
In the 13-page indictment, Pagan and "others known and unknown, paid and assisted in paying bribes to a senior level special agent with the Drug Administration in return for Agent 1 providing nonpublic, confidential DEA information."
The affidavit says, while "employed as a task force officer and a local police detective, participated in the bribery conspiracy by, among other things, acting as an intermediary for tens of thousands of dollars in bribes paid to Agent 1 in order to conceal direct links between the bribe players and the bribe payments."
In return, according to the indictment, Pagan gave confidential DEA information to a private investigator and former DEA investigator so "they could use that information to recruit and represent criminal defendants, including targets of DA investigations."
Then during the trial in November, Pagan is accused of making false statements while testifying under oath regarding tens of thousands of dollars of bribe payments that he transferred to Agent 1.
Department of Justice evidence includes text messages and checks linked to Pagan. One of the meetings involving bribery was a restaurant in Coral Gables, DOJ said.
Pagan holds a black belt in jujitsu and runs Jem Solutions, which provides defense training for the public and police
Pagan received a Bachelor of Science degree from Florida International University and a Master of Behavioral Science degree from Nova Southeastern. He also attended the DEA Quantico Academy in 2009.
