A federal jury in Miami convicted a Miami-based ship surveyor of lying to the Coast Guard and falsely certifying the safety of ships at sea, the federal Department of Justice announced last Thursday.
Alejandro Gonzalez, 60, of Miami-Dade County, Fla., was convicted of three counts of making false statements to the Coast Guard and one count of obstruction of an agency proceeding. The defendant faces a maximum statutory penalty of five years in prison on each count.
The jury found Gonzalez guilty of lying to Coast Guard inspectors and a criminal investigator during an interview in April 2009 about the dry-docking of the M/V Cala Galdana, a 224-foot cargo vessel, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Gonzalez repeatedly claimed the vessel was dry-docked in March 2006 in Cartagena, Colombia, while evidence at the trial proved conclusively that the vessel was never in Colombia during 2006.
