Alaska Police Officer Discovered To Be Undocumented

Go figure.

I’m not sure what to file this story under.

A cop in Anchorage, Alaska, the state’s largest city, has been discovered to have been living under a false identity. Not only that, he is an undocumented worker. To make matters worse, for Anchorage at least, the cop was a well respected member of the the police force.

His name is Rafael Mora-Lopez, but for years he was known as Rafael Espinoza, an Anchorage cop since 2005. He underwent background checks, passed a polygraph exam and served his city well – until he applied for a passport renewal.

According to the Huffington Post:

Federal agents processing a renewal request for his passport discovered the alleged fraud. He was arrested Thursday after authorities searched his home and found documents confirming his true identity, officials said.

His supervisors say that Espinoza was in every way a good police officer.

“His reputation here is one of a hard-working officer, one who was very professional,” Anchorage Police Chief Mark Mew said Friday at a news conference announcing Mora-Lopez’s arrest. “The problem, obviously, is he is not Rafael Espinoza.”

The 47 year-old Mora-Lopez has been charged with passport fraud and has been detained at his home with electronic monitoring. His bond is set at $50,000. The real Rafael Espinoza, meanwhile, is a US citizen who lives outside of Alaska.

The problem now for the Anchorage authorities, aside form the embarrassment of employing an undocumented cop, is that his testimony in past trials may be challenged.  There’s no official word on that yet. Also, there is no evidence  that Mora-Lopez used his position as a police officer to commit any kind of crime.

“We have no evidence that this individual had at the time been anything other than a good police officer,” Karen Loeffler, U.S. Attorney in Alaska said.

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