Florida apartment collapse victims targeted by money-stealing identity thieves

[ad_1]

At first they were victims of condominium collapse in South Florida. Now, they are victims of identity theft.

Many of the people who died in the June 24 South Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside were targeted by thieves who ransacked bank accounts and opened credit cards in their names.

Their son, Sergio Lozano, told WSVN News that the account of Gladys and Antonio Lozano, who have been married for nearly 59 years and found in bed together, was hacked by a hacker on the day of their funeral. The scammers filled out a change of address form and set up online banking for his parents’ account, then withdrew the money via Zelle.

“I find it quite devastating, having lost my parents, that I have to deal with all the estate issues, and now I have to deal with someone stealing from my father,” he said. “After they are dead and buried, do they steal from them?”

Gladys and Antonio Lozano’s identities were stolen after their deaths in the collapse of the Surfside apartment building.

“It’s just a mistake, just a mistake,” Lozano said. “How many people have died in that building, and how many people have their money stolen and are dead under the rubble, which is not true? You should be arrested, you should go to prison.”

Miami-Dade police are investigating this and many other cases.

“It’s the revictimization that we’re kind of beginning to experience now with these hackers,” Charles Burkett, mayor of Surfside, told NBC affiliate NBC.

“They saw the names in the paper, and they’re going straight to it and we had to have discussions with families and listen to them tell us stories of all the sudden credit cards that appear in their names and things bought in their name, so we told them, you should close your balance immediately.

“We’ve already seen multiple cases,” Burkett said.

A woman kneels at the memorial wall for the victims of the Surfside apartment collapse on July 3, 2021.

Joe Murphy, who had lost his best friend and classmate, Estelle Hidaya, of Brooklyn, told the station that he was shivering with disgust and anger.

“All I can say is how low can you go?” Murphy said, shaking his head. “Here we’re setting up a fund in her name for St. Jude’s Hospital, doing something right, and that’s the way things should be done, not that nonsense.”

No arrests have yet been made.

It’s horrible,” Burkett told Local 10 News. “I can’t wait to come face to face with this business right now, and I think the whole of South Florida is eager to see who would do something like this – what kind of people would do something like that. But I’m looking forward to getting caught by the police department, and they’re looking outside.” I don’t want to be that person now.”

Search and rescue workers at the avalanche site in Surfside, Florida on July 2, 2021.

[ad_2]