A caregiver assigned to care for an elderly woman filed false applications and falsified documents to defraud the elderly woman, including out of her Miami real estate, prosecutors say.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office charged Gladys Smith with theft over $100,000 and organized scheme to defraud over $50,000, alleging she filed quitclaim deeds that were illegally transferred to her two rental properties and that she took advantage of a mortgage fraudulently taken out on one of the buildings. Smith, 61, is also charged with exploitation of the elderly, forgery and making false statements to obtain property or credit, according to a warrant affidavit filed by the District Attorney’s Office. Miami-Dade State.
The case marks the latest allegation of theft of real estate through forged deeds in Miami-Dade County, with some of the previously accused also targeting the elderly.
In the most recent case, Miriam Fernandez, 81, was placed in Smith’s care after he rented a room at her home in Margate late last year. Fernandez has a medical condition that affects her eyesight to such an extent that she cannot drive and requires a magnifying glass to read, making her entirely dependent on Smith to get to her medical appointments and read literature. documents.
Fernandez, who has no living relatives, received rental income from his two properties: a two-bedroom condo at 2496 Southwest 17th Avenue in the Silver Bluff neighborhood and a two-story, two-unit building at 2340 and 2342 Northwest 15th Street to Allapattah.
In February, Smith fraudulently took possession of the real estate through quitclaim deeds that were falsified to include Fernandez’s signature. A friend of Smith’s signed the deeds as a notary, and her boyfriend and son signed the documents as witnesses, according to the affidavit. Records also indicated that Fernandez’s driver’s license was presented, even though his license had been revoked and confiscated following a 2021 car accident.
After an $80,000 mortgage was taken out on the Allapattah building, nearly $76,000 of the funds were diverted to Smith, the affidavit states.
Smith exploited Fernandez in other ways, including falsely representing herself as Fernandez’s daughter to doctors and having her sign a power of attorney which contributed to the theft of property, according to the affidavit. Fernandez had agreed to give Smith power of attorney for medical appointments, but not for his bank accounts and properties. Yet when Fernandez signed the power of attorney document, she had to trust Smith’s explanation of what the filing actually said, the affidavit says.
After investigators began looking into the case and Fernandez left Smith’s home after learning of the alleged fraud, authorities asked Fernandez to call Smith.
“Smith attempted to manipulate (Fernandez) by telling her that she was the one who authorized the real estate transactions,” Ailin Hernandez, an investigator with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, wrote in the affidavit. Smith insisted that Fernandez “was crazy and forgetting things,” but Fernandez was clear in her denial of Smith’s allegations.
Also on the call, Smith “said she gave everything back and insisted she only did so because the state was going to take custody of the victim and her property,” Hernandez wrote.
This week, Tallahassee police arrested Smith, who will be brought to Miami for arraignment, according to WFOR-TV CBS Miami. Calls to Smith’s cell phone went unanswered, and an attorney who previously worked on a real estate transaction on Smith’s behalf declined to comment.
