Florida Keys deputies helping a bail bondsman serve an arrest warrant on a hotel room Thursday uncovered what appears to be a major fraud case involving hundreds of stolen and fraudulent documents, including credit cards, IDs and passports, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
The raid on the room at the Sunset Cover Beach Resort in Key Largo also turned up burglary tools, forged checks, a scanner to make counterfeit credit cards. Deputies also found drugs, including fentanyl, mushrooms and marijuana, the sheriff’s office said, adding there was also evidence of stolen mail.
“Detectives are alerting banks, credit card companies, and the U.S. Post Office of this incident,” Sheriff Rick Ramsay said in a statement. “To have an investigation of this magnitude in our area is significant. It is so important for law enforcement, financial institutions, the U.S. Post Office, and our citizens to be vigilant and work together.”
The three people in the room — Katie Campbell, 42, from Islamorada, Jacob Michael Majewski, 27, from Miami, and Michael George Harvey, 30, also from Miami — were arrested on more than 100 felony counts each of fraud, as well as grand theft, burglary and drug possession charges.
Campbell and Majewski on Friday were in county jail with no bond. Harvey remained at Mariners Hospital in Tavernier guarded by deputies, said sheriff’s office spokesman Adam Linhardt. He was taken there after deputies found him dehydrated and determined he had consumed drugs, said Linhardt, who declined to elaborate on his condition.
Thursday’s arrests are just the beginning of an investigation into what the sheriff’s office said is potentially “a large criminal enterprise.” Detectives are in the process of trying to determine if any of the recovered IDs and credit cards belong to Monroe County resident, “as some of them were fake or counterfeit,” Linhardt said.
Ramsay told News that the sheriff’s office is looking into the possibility that the case could be related to an ongoing investigation into a check-stealing operation that has resulted in the arrests of at least seven people so far.
More than $175,000 in checks were stolen from residential mailboxes or from a U.S. Postal Service office in the Keys.
Ramsay said when the initial arrests happened in April that he suspected someone who works as a Postal Service employee in the Keys was involved in the crime. He said Friday there have been more arrests in connection with the case since then, and the investigation is ongoing.
“The mail case has had a few more arrest warrants as we continue to investigate that case as well,” Ramsay said.