2 Miami-Dade health inspectors accused of fabricating violations to extort restaurants
Two Miami-Dade County health inspectors were arrested on accusations that they fabricated violations to extort bribes from restaurant owners, officials said Wednesday.
In total, Charles Bryant II and Craig Bethel extorted $14,620 from 15 businesses, Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz said during a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.
Both men, who worked for Miami-Dade Department of Environmental Resources Management, are accused of making up bogus health violations and threatening the businesses with shutting them down if they didn’t pay them money.
“Just think about how they felt,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said at the briefing, referencing the restaurant owners. “They felt like they were being robbed.”
The first complaint was received by the sheriff’s office in April, which resulted in the arrest of Bryant II, 44, on charges of unlawful compensation and official misconduct.
When Bryant was arrested this week, he had already been serving a five-year probation sentence from a conviction on an arrest in July for shaking down three restaurants, according to county court records.
Bryant’s attorney, Jay White, told the Herald that he has not seen the most recent arrest affidavit, so he could not comment on the particulars of the case.
“We’re surprised that these charges are coming out now,” White said. “They predate his previous cases that are closed.”
The tip about Bryant led detectives to continue investigating the case, and more victims came forward, Cordero-Stutz said.
They subsequently began investigating Bethel, who was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on 10 counts of unlawful compensation and a count each of official misconduct by a public official and organized fraud, according to jail records.
Bethel was booked Wednesday and the judge set his bond at $85,000.
Cordero-Stutz, who emphasized at the media briefing that she ran for sheriff last year on a platform of tackling corruption, said she’s asking more business owners to come forward because she believes there are more victims and possibly more inspectors involved in similar schemes.
“It is an important issue in our community and it is not going to be tolerated,” Cordero-Stutz said.
According to county records, Bethel was hired on May 18, 2020. Bryant was hired on Dec. 31, 2018. Both men’s annual salaries were around $42,000, according to county payroll data.
The arrest affidavit detailing Bethel’s accusations wasn’t immediately available.
According to the report for Bryant’s arrest in July, he went to South Garden Chinese Restaurant at 10855 SW 72nd Street in April wearing his county uniform and informed the owners their waste oil tank was in violation and would cost $50,000 to fix.
He told the owners, according to the report, that if they paid him a “$3,000 tip,” the problem would go away.
In May, Bryant went to the Bangkok Bangkok restaurant at 12584 SW 88th Street and told them their grease trap would cost them $60,000 to fix, but he would not write them up if he paid him a $6,000 “helpers fee,” according to the affidavit.
Then, in July, he arrived at the El Maguey Taquero Mucho Mexican Restaurant at 9817 SW 40th Street and told an employee there that the business’ grease trap had a leak and they would be fined unless they paid him $2,000, according to the report.
Instead of paying the bribe, however, the business owner told Bryant he would have to fine her “and she would deal with the payment at that point,” detectives said in their report.
Roy Coley, Chief Utilities and Regulatory Services officer for the Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources, released a statement Wednesday saying the agency launched its own investigation and worked with the sheriff’s office in its probe of Bryant and Bethel.
“And as a result of our internal investigation, the inspectors are no longer employed with Miami-Dade County,” Coley said.
“Additionally, we have taken several steps to prevent any criminal behavior in the future, including working to outfit all inspection staff in RER-DERM with body cameras and standardizing RER’s vehicle tracking system operations across the entire department to improve monitoring (RER requires that all vehicles have location trackers installed).
“We are grateful to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office for their diligence in arresting these bad actors and are committed to continuing our collaboration with them,” Coley said.
Miami Herald staff Writer Doug Hanks contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 12, 2025 at 3:24 PM.
