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.
The ongoing probe has already produced related convictions and prison sentences for other former employees, putting a spotlight on how carefully contractors are vetting documents on jobs that rely on federal dollars.
Legal context
Aggravated identity theft under federal law carries a mandatory two-year prison term that must run consecutive to any other sentence, a setup that can quickly add time in fraud-related cases. As summarized by Congress.gov, that requirement is built into 18 U.S.C. § 1028A and is routinely factored into federal sentencing for identity-theft convictions.
What this means for employers
Investigators say the Diaz-Garcia case is a real-world reminder that even with electronic checks in place, bad paperwork can still slip through. Materials from the Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General warn that E-Verify runs data against federal records but cannot always spot high-quality fake or stolen identities, which can leave contractors exposed to compliance failures and federal scrutiny.
The SSA-OIG has urged tighter controls and closer coordination among agencies on federally funded projects, particularly where large workforces cycle on and off job sites.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office also posted news of the sentencing on X; the announcement is available via USAO Middle District of Florida. For background, Hoodline previously covered the December jury decision in the case in an earlier story: December jury verdict, which lays out the original indictment and the early stages of the Pinellas construction site investigation.
