BY ALFONSO CHARDY

Florida's surgeon general has filed a complaint with the state Board of Psychology against Carlos Alvarez, a psychologist and former Florida International University professor convicted of conspiring to act as an unregistered agent for Cuba.

The administrative complaint is being reviewed by the department's attorneys before it goes to the board, said Eulinda Jackson, a spokeswoman for Ana Viamonte Ros, the state surgeon general and Florida health secretary. Viamonte Ros complaint, filed in December, asks the board to consider penalties against Alvarez, including revocation or suspension of his license, limiting of his practice, a fine or a reprimand.

Viamonte Ros told the board in the eight-page complaint that Alvarez violated rules of his profession for being convicted and failing to advise the board of his guilty plea in a timely manner.

Steven Chaykin, Alvarez's attorney, said the complaint will have no impact on his client, because he did not practice psychology.

''Anyone who has a professional license and is convicted of a felony goes through a similar bureaucratic administrative process,'' said Chaykin. ``Though a suspension or revocation of his license is embarrassing, he did absolutely nothing wrong with his license . . . He didn't practice psychology. He did not have patients.''

Over the years, Alvarez taught diversity workshops in school districts and conducted psychological screenings of cadets for the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County police departments.

Alvarez and his wife Elsa, both former FIU academics, apologized at their sentencing hearing Feb. 27 for giving Cuba information on Miami's exile community.

U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore sentenced Carlos Alvarez to the maximum five-year prison sentence for conspiring to act as an unregistered Cuban agent and Elsa Alvarez to the maximum three years' imprisonment for failing to report her husband's intelligence work.

Viamonte Ros wrote in the complaint that Florida laws require that a psychologist be disciplined if convicted of a crime that relates to the practice of the profession.

''A health care practitioner who manifests such complete and reckless disregard for the law as respondent demonstrated by his activities as an agent of a foreign government cannot be entrusted with the responsibility associated with the practice of psychology,'' Viamonte Ros wrote.

Gov. Charlie Crist named Viamonte Ros, a Cuban American, secretary of the Florida Department of Health in January 2007. In July, she became the first State Surgeon General.