A co-conspirator, Ralph Rios, was reportedly also arrested in Miami.
Police say Neves is charged with running the "U.S. Recovery Bureau" school, which offered three-day courses in Passaic, Brooklyn and Washington Heights.
After the training, students were given phony police badges, adorned with a United States seal.
He allegedly distributed more than 3,000 badges to his students, who were charged $860 for the course. But the students were never given background checks.
Neves was a police officer in the mid-1990s, but was fired for filing false police reports.
Neves was released on $50,000 bail.
