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She’s running for Miami-Dade commission and wants a judge to seal her perjury case

A candidate for Miami-Dade County Commission wants to prevent the public from seeing court records tied to her 2020 arrest on perjury charges, a criminal case that led to her resignation from the Sweetwater commission for lying about living there long enough to hold office.

Sophia Lacayo, running to succeed term-limited Jose “Pepe” Diaz as the county’s District 12 commissioner, filed in Miami-Dade County Court to seal the misdemeanor case on June 14. She pleaded guilty to perjury in 2020 and, as part of her agreement with prosecutors, resigned from the Sweetwater post.

Sealing her criminal case would make all those records inaccessible to the public, according to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, which opposes Lacayo’s request.

Her guilty plea and resignation drew renewed attention after she filed to run for county office. Her opponent in the District 12 race is J.C. Bermudez, mayor of Doral. Under her plea agreement, Lacayo was sentenced to a year’s probation and no conviction was recorded.

Lacayo and her lawyer, Susy Ribero-Ayala, were not available for comment.

In 2019, Lacayo, who owns a tax-preparation business, was a first-time candidate preparing to run for the Sweetwater commission. City rules require commissioners to have lived in Sweetwater for two years prior to the election.

Police say Lacayo lied to qualify for Sweetwater commission

On her candidacy forms, Lacayo listed two addresses: a duplex where she said she had been living with her mother and other relatives for nine months, as well as a room several doors down that she said she had rented since 2016.

About six months later, state police investigated a tip about Lacayo not meeting the residency requirements.

During a sworn statement in Spanish on Oct. 28, 2019, at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Miami office, Lacayo told investigators she had paid up to $400 sometimes for a bedroom in the home of a client, Ana Maria Pazos. Lacayo said she would stay there when not working or staying with her children in a Kendall home she still shared with her estranged husband.

“Because of my schedule, the time I would leave and come back, some people really didn’t know that I lived there,” Lacayo told investigators about the Sweetwater room, according to a transcript of the interview translated into English. “I would always arrive quietly.”

‘A very complicated favor’

But Pazos told investigators that two men were living in the room during the time Lacayo said she rented it. Pazos said Lacayo never lived in her home, but did ask if she could use the address when she filed to run for office.

“I told her: ‘Well, you can use my address, as long as I don’t get [any] problems with this,’ ” Pazos said during the English-language interview, according to the transcript. At another point in the interview, she told investigators: “It was a very complicated favor.”

Miami-Dade prosecutors oppose the Lacayo request to seal records from her arrest and court case. In a response filed Wednesday, Michael Spivack, assistant state attorney in Miami-Dade, urged Judge Edward Newman not to make the records confidential, saying the public has the right to know the facts behind the case.

“This is especially so as the petitioner may again seek public office and the public has a right to know that the petitioner previously plead to a charge of perjury related to her qualifications for public office,” Spivack wrote.

Miami Herald staff writer David Ovalle contributed to this report.