A Florida coroner pocketed hundreds of dollars stolen from the people he was tasked with investigating.
Darrell Fernando Reed Jr., 38, is suspected of swiping multiple bank cards while working for coroners in Florida and New York over the past two years, according to court records. It was obtained by the Miami Herald.
He allegedly used that information to transfer funds directly to his account using Cash App.
Mr. Reed’s long-held plans fell apart in October, when he had only been working as an investigator at the Broward County Coroner’s Office for nine months.
The sticky-fingered employee, along with nine other employees, stole the dead man’s Bank of America card information while responding to a Coral Springs apartment complex where the cardholder had been lying decomposing for two weeks. He is accused of taking notes.
The man’s daughter quickly discovered three “suspicious” transactions made after her father’s death, all involving $150 payments made on Cash App to women Reid had been dating, prosecutors allege. are doing.
The first payment was submitted just 90 minutes after investigators locked the condo’s front door and handed the keys to the deceased man’s daughter.
It’s also worth noting that the ATM card was found by the daughter sitting on the kitchen counter, even though investigators recorded it as one of several contents found in the wallet during the death examination. .
A subsequent investigation revealed that Reed was suspected of stealing the cards of at least three other deceased victims.
Reed was at the scene of two different death investigations in November and December 2022, one in Broward County and the other in New York City, and was arrested by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Worked as an investigator. state.
Mr. Reed was not at the scene of the investigation into the third victim’s death, but he is accused of disclosing the victim’s debit card information while reviewing the Broward County case file.
From 2020 until November of last year, Reed stuffed 27 payment sources into Cash App, including 25 debit and credit cards and two Cash App cards, but how many were allegedly swiped? is not clear.
“An investigation into the additional card account holders is currently underway and subpoenas have been served on multiple banking institutions,” Reed’s warrant states.
Reed was charged with three counts of fraudulent use of a deceased person’s personal identifying information and fraudulent use of a credit card.
He resigned from the Broward County Coroner’s Office on Friday after serving as investigator since April 2023.
The newspaper contacted New York’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner regarding Mr. Reed’s employment.
