Defectives in Miami-Dade County, Florida have arrested a fourth suspect in an intricate identity-theft scheme entered around using the identities of the victims of the Surfside condominium collapse.
According to detectives, 20-year-old Nelson Ronald Garcia-Medina used the information of a person killed in that horrific event to purchase a $130 pair of sneakers. According to local10.com Garcia-Medina’s arrest comes after Betsy Alejandra Cacho-Medina, 30, Kimberly Michelle Johnson, 34, and Rodney Choute, 38, were taken into custody in the scheme Wednesday, September 9. They face 15-30 years if convicted of their various charges.
An arrest report for Garcia-Medina states a search warrant was executed at his home on September 8 where a note book was found “that contained written instructions on how to obtain free credit reports in [victims’] names as well as instructions on how to conduct sim swaps over the phone.”
Sim swaps are the tactic employed by this group of fraudsters in which they contacted the victim’s phone carrier and using their acquired personal information to “to illegally swap the victim’s phone number to a new phone without the victim’s knowledge or consent.”
Merchandise and receipts for items that showed they were purchased using stolen credit cards were also found by detectives. One of the receipts were for a pair of Jordans that Garcia-Medina is accused of buying with the deceased victim’s information.
