'Cyber grave robbers' accused of stealing identities of Florida condo victims

Miami

IN the dark days following the Champlain Towers South condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, the sister of Ana Ortiz, who died in the tragedy, noticed strange financial activity in Ms Ortiz's accounts.

A notification that Ms Ortiz's mailing address had been changed. Requests for replacement credit cards to be mailed to a new address. Unauthorised wire transfers. Purchases charged to her cards.

The sister, Nicole Ortiz, notified police. It was July 9, barely two weeks after the June 24 collapse - and the day of Ana Ortiz's funeral.

The results of the investigation, which grew to involve several local and federal law enforcement agencies, were revealed on Wednesday, when prosecutors in Miami-Dade County announced that they had charged three people with stealing the identities of at least seven Champlain Towers residents. Five of them, including Ana Ortiz, had been killed in the collapse. Two had survived.

"They're professionals," Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle said in a news conference about the three people accused of identity theft. "It was really horrible what they did, to prey further on the family members of the deceased." She called them "cyber grave robbers" .

Authorities charged Betsy Alexandra Cacho Medina, 30, and Rodney Choute, 38, both of North Miami, and Kimberly Michelle Johnson, 34, of Miami, with organising a scheme to defraud and with multiple counts of identity fraud. Prosecutors identified Choute as Medina's boyfriend and Johnson as her associate.

In all, the three stole at least US$45,000 and attempted to steal an additional US$67,000, Ms Fernández Rundle said. Among the high-end purchases made in Ana Ortiz's name, according to an arrest affidavit for Medina, were a US$1,658 Versace purse bought in Miami and a US$374 pair of Medusa sandals bought at a Nordstrom in Aventura, Florida.

James Lee, chief operating officer of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit organisation, said identity thieves have learned to pounce after tragedies where people become displaced, such as the condo collapse, or in the wake of hurricanes, wildfires and floods.

"They have a game plan that they roll out every time there's an event like this," he said. "They will try to impersonate someone who's been incapacitated or where there has been a fatality."

In the news conference, Ms Fernández Rundle showed a video clip from a surveillance camera inside a Bloomingdale's. The clip showed a woman, whom the authorities identified as Medina, clad in a face mask and a hat - and carrying the fraudulently purchased Versace purse - as she bought three pairs of shoes.

Ms Fernández Rundle also played two audio recordings of Medina calling a Barclays customer service line and impersonating Ana Ortiz. She requested replacement credit cards and a personal identification number. In one of the calls, she identified herself as a victim of the Surfside collapse.

Arrest affidavits show that police tracked down Medina using surveillance footage that led officers to one of her vehicles, a 2019 Mercedes-Benz. They found that she, Johnson and Choute had routed their fraudulently obtained credit cards to an address in Hallandale Beach, Florida, to a vacant apartment with a damaged, unlocked mailbox that they used as a "drop box". Eventually, officers found the residences where the three accused really lived and learned they had presented some counterfeit identification documents to their landlords.

The identity theft victims included Frank Kleiman, Ana Ortiz's husband. Nicole Ortiz did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Two people unrelated to the Champlain Towers collapse also had their identities stolen in the scheme, according to police.

One of the Champlain Towers survivors targeted by the scheme had applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The thieves had changed her address so her payments would be redirected to the Hallandale Beach apartment. NYTIMES