Medical examiner investigator accused of stealing credit card info from dead residents

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — An investigator for a South Florida medical examiner’s office is accused of stealing the credit card information of at least one deceased county resident, according to court records.

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According to Broward County online court records, Darrell Fernando Reid, 38, of Pembroke Pines, was arrested on Jan. 19 and charged with three counts of criminal use of a dead person’s identification and one count of fraudulent use of a credit card.

Reid had been an investigator with the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office, the Sun-Sentinel reported. He was accused of stealing the credit card of a deceased person and used it to charge approximately $450.

His job with the medical examiner’s office was to document scenes by taking photographs, according to the Sun-Sentinel. He was hired on April 17, 2023, and did not have contact with any victims’ bodies, the newspaper reported.

According to an arrest affidavit from the Coral Springs Police Department, Reid was among officials called to a residence in Coral Springs on Oct. 21. The victim had been dead for more than two weeks.

Three days after the man’s body was discovered, his daughter contacted police and told them that she found his debit card on a kitchen counter. She told police that she checked his bank account and noticed that it had been accessed three times for $150 each.

Police tied the payments to a CashApp account belonging to Reid and another to his girlfriend, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

According to the arrest affidavit, from 2020 until Nov. 8, 2023, Reid’s CashApp account information listed 25 credit and debit cards as “payment sources,” along with two CashApp accounts.

In addition to the card belonging to the deceased victim, investigators discovered two others connected to people who died in Broward County last year -- one on Oct. 30 and the other on Nov. 6, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

Police also linked Reid’s CashApp account to the credit card of a man who died in New York City in December 2022, the newspaper reported. At the time, Reid was an investigator for the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, according to the arrest affidavit.

A call to Reid’s defense lawyer was not returned Monday, according to the Sun-Sentinel. Reid’s girlfriend has not been charged in the case as of Monday.

Reid has posted bail, online court records show. A court date has yet to be set.

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