FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – A 63-year-old Florida woman was arrested Tuesday on a Flagler County fugitive warrant after a two-year investigation into the alleged fraudulent sale of multiple properties, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said.
The fugitive unit, with assistance from the DeFuniak Springs Police Department, arrested the woman on a charge of organized scheme to defraud more than $50,000. She was taken to the Walton County Jail and later released on $100,000 bond, the sheriff’s office said.
Recommended Videos
Investigators began probing the case in January 2024 after a resident reported that a property in the S‑Section had been sold without the owner’s knowledge when the owner was unable to pay taxes because the lot was listed under another name. A separate investigation in April 2024 involved a vacant lot in the W‑Section after a relative discovered a home had been built on the property without the owner’s permission.
Records showed victims were listed as sellers, but detectives determined the driver’s license photo used in at least one transaction did not match the victim and instead matched the Bartow woman, authorities said. Wire transfers from the property sales were traced to a bank account opened by the woman in December 2022. Since then, she wrote checks to others and to herself and deposited funds into a separate personal account.
A review of the account showed $421,995.30 in deposits tied to property sales in four Florida cases and one case in Georgia, investigators said. Detectives say the woman wired funds from the account to a Coinbase account, converted the money to cryptocurrency, and transferred it to two accounts they identified as belonging to men in Nigeria.
With help from the sheriff’s real-time crime center, detectives linked the activity to four additional cases: two in Lee County, Fla.; one in Greene County, Ga.; and a civil case in Pueblo County, Colo. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office assisted in obtaining a search warrant for the woman’s cellphone; prosecutors said the phone contained text messages with a person using the name Chase Rice and other messages indicating continued involvement in receiving and moving funds into cryptocurrency.
“Crime knows no borders, and it doesn’t stop at the Florida Georgia Line,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “This criminal may claim she has some high-profile friends, but I don’t see her friends getting her out of the jam she’s put herself in.”
Authorities did not say whether additional charges are expected.