‘Cyber Grave Robbers’ Accused of Stealing Identities of Surfside Condo Victims

In the dark days following the Champlain Towers South condominium collapse in Surfside, Fla., 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. Unauthorized wire transfers. Purchases charged to her cards.

The sister, Nicole Ortiz, notified the 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 for stealing the identities of at least seven Champlain Towers residents. Five of them, including Ms. Ortiz, had been killed in the June 24 collapse. Two had survived.

“They’re professionals,” Katherine Fernández Rundle, the Miami-Dade state attorney, said in a news conference about the accused thieves. “It was really horrible what they did, to prey further on the family members of the deceased.”

She called them “cyber grave robbers.”

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

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

James E. Lee, the chief operating officer of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit organization, 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 Ms. 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 Ms. Medina calling a Barclays customer service line and impersonating Ms. 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 the police tracked down Ms. Medina using surveillance footage that led officers to one of her vehicles, a 2019 Mercedes-Benz. They found that she, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Choute had routed their fraudulently obtained credit cards to an address in Hallandale Beach, 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, Ms. Ortiz’s husband. Nicole Ortiz, Ms. Ortiz’s sister, did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Two people unrelated to the Champlain Towers also had their identities stolen in the scheme, according to the 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.