According to Florida officials, a guy posed as a woman undergoing cancer treatment to request financial assistance from nonprofits in numerous states. The head of The LYN Fund, a Tampa-area organization, first raised the alarm in April, according to Volusia County deputies.
Her organization helps cancer sufferers in treatment or recovery by covering their living expenses. Its website states that it assists those diagnosed with “women’s cancers.”
According to an affidavit, the woman informed the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office that her group received an application for assistance from someone named Sally Holmes, who was being treated for breast cancer and had been out of work for several months. The nonprofit’s executive director stated that she reviewed the application and sent a $5,000 rent check to the applicant’s landlord.
Then she received an anonymous call claiming that the 69-year-old Deltona man to whom she had transferred the money was not a landlord and was instead running a fraud operation, according to deputies.
McClatchy News contacted the man’s attorney but did not receive an immediate response on Monday. The woman conducted additional research and discovered that the phone number indicated for Sally Holmes was no longer in operation, the doctor’s number was inaccurate, and the house where she was allegedly renting was a vacant property, according to deputies.
She understood Sally Holmes was not the one who submitted the application.
She contacted other groups and discovered that they had received similar applications under different names, all of which listed the same individual as their landlord and to whom the money should be delivered, deputies said. “Yolanda Jekins” applied to the New Hampshire Breast Cancer Coalition because she couldn’t work enough hours to cover all of her medical appointments, according to deputies. “Joshlynn Jackson” contacted the Tennessee Breast Cancer Coalition, the Wisconsin Ovarian Cancer Alliance, and Sophia’s Fund in Massachusetts to request assistance with rent payments during cancer treatment, according to officials.
According to authorities, the organizations also issued cheques to the man listed as the landlord.
“The organizations all pay living expenses for patients battling breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and pediatric cancer,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood stated in a press statement.
The individual is suspected of utilizing the same phony physicians, phone numbers, and names on many applications for women who either did not exist or were not legitimate applicants. “I have seen a lot of morally reprehensible scams in my career, but this has to be one of the worst,” said Chitwood.
When detectives spoke with the accused individual, he stated that he does not own rental properties but does occasionally paychecks on behalf of others as part of a company he runs from his house, according to deputies.
He was taken into Volusia County Jail on Wednesday on counts of organized scheme to defraud and grand theft over $5,000 but less than $10,000, according to documents.
Deltona is a 30-mile trip northeast of central Orlando.