Civil engineer steals cash and credit card information from victims in Coral Gables senior living facility

CORAL GABLES, Florida. – A civil engineer who worked at a senior living facility in Coral Gables was arrested Tuesday on charges of stealing cash and credit card information from some of the residents there.

Jerimah Jones, 33, of Homestead, has since been released from the Belmont Village senior living facility, 4111 Salzedo St., a police report said.

According to the report, Jones was fired for “suspicious activity” and “failure to show up for work on time.”

Coral Gables police said employees had access to key fobs to enter the apartments and perform maintenance when a work order had been issued, but Jones was suspected of using the key fobs to steal money from some residents.

“A review of the building’s key fob logs indicates that the suspect’s key fob was used to open apartment doors around the time the items went missing,” the arrest report states.

According to police, Jones’ company cellphone was returned to management after his firing, and the facility’s senior vice president of information technology discovered several “images of the victims’ identification documents.”

The documents included images of checks, credit card information, driver’s licenses and even a Costco Wholesale membership card, the report said.

All victims affected are older than 65 years, authorities said.

According to the report, a victim told police that approximately $650 in cash was stolen from her bedroom drawer sometime in January.

According to police, keychain and cell phone logs show that Jones took photos of the victims’ personal documents minutes after entering their homes.

According to the report, Jones was arrested on Tuesday and taken to the Coral Gables Police Department for questioning.

Jones denied stealing any cash and claimed he found all the documents in a dumpster on the ground floor of the senior residence, authorities said.

Police say he confessed after being confronted with the keychain transcript and image timestamps, but his exact statement was redacted from the publicly available report.

According to the report, Jones is charged with 17 counts of possession or fraudulent use of personal identification, six counts of exploitation of an elderly/disabled person and one count of petty theft.

As of Wednesday morning, he remained at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where his bail had not yet been set.