A fraud investigation was reopened and a suspect was arrested in the theft of dozens of senior citizen identities.
The suspected source of dozens of stolen identities in a 2021 fraud case that victimized senior citizens has been identified and arrested after a Volusia County Sheriff’s detective reopened the investigation and tracked her down in South Florida.
41-year-old Claudia Jules was arrested on her Volusia County warrants by members of the Coral Springs Police Department Strategic Enforcement Team.
Jules is charged with criminal use of personal identification information in the latest chapter of a case that will be prosecuted by the Florida Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution.
The original investigation began in 2021 after a senior victim in Delray Beach discovered someone used his identity to purchase a vehicle at Daytona Kia. The ensuing investigation, Operation Soul Stingers, led by the Daytona Beach Police Department and Florida Attorney General’s Office, identified seven defendants involved in stealing 72 identities that were used to purchase cars, apply for loans, and open lines of credit.
The ringleader, Drayton McMillan, is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for his crimes. However, one additional suspect, Shaquiledra Johnson, remained at large until March of this year, when she was pulled over on a traffic stop and arrested by Lake Helen police on her 2022 warrants from the Daytona Beach PD operation.
Upon learning of her arrest, VSO Financial Crimes Det. Bill Weaver took the opportunity to reopen the investigation and interview Johnson. That interview and months of additional police work led Det. Weaver to positively identify Claudia Jules, now living in Coral Springs, as the person who provided the victims’ identities to the ringleader McMillan.
According to local law enforcement, Jules, a former girlfriend of McMillan’s, stole the victims’ personal information from a Delray Beach medical office where she worked from 2016 to 2021. Through the reopened investigation, Det. Weaver discovered each of the 72 victims were patients of that practice. Jules worked in the records section, where she had full access to patients’ private information.
Det. Weaver determined that initially, McMillan used patients’ identities to make small purchases for himself and for Jules. As time went on, the purchases became larger. In 2020 and 2021, McMillan and the other defendants began using stolen identities to purchase new cars and apply for government loans offered during the COVID pandemic.
Jules was being held at the Broward County Jail with a bond of $200,000 pending extradition back to Volusia County.
