Burglars like to disguise themselves as all sorts of unassuming parties
in order to steal without getting caught or being suspected. Recently,
three men were arrested in Fort Lauderdale after they pretended to be
landscapers so that they could steal from senior citizens. The men came
dressed in landscaper garb and offered to spruce up senior citizen’s
yards in Florida.
Then they would return the next day, and slowly scam the men and women
out of thousands of dollars. The South Florida burglars focused on finding
easy marks. Typically they would locate an older American with a mental
disability or cognitive impairment and then insist that they were trustworthy
landscapers. The naive elderly men and women would then agree to the deals,
and be charged thousands for landscaping work that wasn’t done or
wasn’t needed.
A Broward County judge ordered two of the ring suspects to be held on a
$30,000 bond. They have been charged with
grand theft and exploiting the elderly. A third suspect was arrested Tuesday but has
not come to the court yet for a hearing. The landscaping scheme allegedly
carried on for over four years and the victims lost a collective $20,000.
The thieves operated under the business name Royal Tree Service, but experimented
with other pseudonyms as well when they were working for the seniors.
The fraudulent landscapers would often come back day after day, insisting
that they had to do more work. One victim had statements saying that he
had been charged over one thousand dollars three times over in one week.
While this scheme sounds unscrupulous and devious, there are always possibilities
that the wrong suspects were arrested. For example, if a true landscaper
arrived at a senior’s home soon after the fraudulent landscapers
did, then that innocent man might be brought into the case when he was
not a part of it.
Contact a Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorney today if you have been
wrongly accused of grand theft and need assistance.