Florida Man Christian Mosco Impersonated A Prosecutor, Tried To Drop Charges Against Himself, Gets 10 Years

A Florida man who impersonated a prosecutor in order to attempt to drop the charges against himself has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.

Christian Eugene Mosco’s latest crime spree reportedly began in May 2019. Mosco allegedly came across a list of customers’ records from a Daytona Beach Chevrolet dealership and purportedly attempted to extort the business by claiming that he would go to the media with the records, opening up the potential for class-action lawsuits that would put the dealership out of business. All he wanted in exchange for not releasing the records, according to a report at the time from Orlando’s WESH-TV, was $50,000 cash and a 2019 Chevy Malibu.

The dealer set up a sting operation where Mosco was to turn over the records in exchange for the money and the keys. However, Mosco was met by police officers, taken to jail, and charged with extortion.

Now facing jail time, Mosco then came up with Plan B. According to a companion News-Journal report from January 2020, the previous September Mosco somehow again got his hands on something that wasn’t his and tried to use it for his benefit. This time, it was the identification information of two Florida prosecutors, and Mosco reportedly used it to access a computer and try to drop the charges against himself.

Man accused of trying to extort owner of Jon Hall Chevrolet who is also former #DaytonaBeach mayor Glenn Ritchey. Christian Mosco allegedly demanded 50K cash & a new car in exchange 4 old dealership sales records w personal info he found & threatened to release. Details @WESH 4&5 pic.twitter.com/bvYBzqf0Vi

— claire metz (@clairemetzwesh) May 23, 2019

Unfortunately for Mosco, two things did him in.

First, he supposedly filed the wrong form. Specifically, he allegedly got a copy of a “no information” document from someone else’s case and fraudulently altered it, then supposedly filed it using the Florida Courts E-Filing portal under a fraudulent user account he allegedly made with the personal information stolen from a real attorney. However, the “no information” document wouldn’t have dropped the charges against him; to do that, he’d have had to file a nolle prosequi, meaning that the prosecution had dropped the charges.

Secondly, an actual employee of the Volusia County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Laura Panzarino, noticed the suspicious filing and alerted her superiors.

When the dust settled, charges of falsely impersonating a prosecutor, practicing law without authority, fraudulent use of identification, fraudulently acting as a state attorney, and uttering a forgery in the form of a fake no information were all added to his existing criminal case. He was suddenly facing decades behind bars.

However, Mosco took a plea agreement — with the real prosecutor — that had him plead guilty to two counts of falsely impersonating an officer, practicing law without authority, two counts of fraudulent use of personal identification and criminal process under color of law and uttering a forgery. This week, he was sentenced to 10 years.

Seventh Circuit State Attorney R.J. Larizza said in a statement that, had Mosco put his criminal efforts into legal activities, he might have made something of himself.

“Had he used his talents for positive and law-abiding activities, he would not be on his way to the State Prison System,” Larizza said.