(Reuters) – A man and two women were arrested and charged with stealing the identities of seven victims of the Surfside condominium collapse near Miami Beach this summer and attempting to obtain credit cards in their names, a Florida prosecutor said on Wednesday.
Bettsy Alejandra Cacho-Medina, 30, Kimberly Michelle Johnson, 34, and Rodney Choute, 38, face multiple counts of identity theft and fraud, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a briefing.
The suspects are accused of taking the personal identification of five people who died or two that survived the collapse of the Champlain Towers South tower in June. That information was later used to open credit cards and make fraudulent transactions valued at up to $50,000.
Nearly 100 people were killed when the 12-story residential building came down early in the morning of June 24. It took more than a month for search crews to recover and identify the remains of all individuals who were trapped in the rubble.
Of the 98 people killed in the collapse, all but one of them died at the scene.
(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)
