A man who was jailed for nine months after being mistaken for someone else has settled his civil rights claim against the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office.
The Augusta Commission approved a $300,000 settlement July 29 with Maurice Rivera, who was wrongfully charged in a 2020 armed robbery involving a dating app.
In July 2020, a man named Tyler Middleton told police he was approached at random and robbed at gunpoint by a woman and two masked men, according to court filings.
Surveillance video showed no robbery at the location. Middleton then told police he met the woman on the site Plenty of Fish and that two men, one with a gun and wearing medical masks, robbed him when she picked him up.
New video showed Middleton getting out of a car driven by a woman named Adrianne Hilton, whom Middleton said he’d met on the dating site.
Investigators Walter McNeil, Sean Morrow and Paxton Hammond, named in Rivera’s lawsuit, searched Hilton’s social media and found a post mentioning “Maurice Rivera.” They also located a profile for a “Pedro Kilo.”
Shown a photo, Middleton identified the Pedro Kilo account’s owner as the gunman. Investigators got a warrant to arrest Rivera in August 2020, and he was later indicted for armed robbery. Rivera spent nine months at Charles B. Webster Detention Center before making bond.
Court records showed the Pedro Kilo account actually belonged to Keenon Staley, whose email addresses and birthdate matched the account. While Rivera was jailed, Staley searched Facebook for Rivera and Hilton. In a private message, Staley said investigators had “the wrong person.”
Prosecutors dismissed the charges in September 2023. Rivera sued in U.S. District Court for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and violations of his Fourth Amendment rights.
