A South Florida Starlink scam artist who was part of a group posing as Central Florida officials to con vendors out of their products was arrested.
Over the course of about 11 months, scammers pretending to represent Volusia County contacted hundreds of vendors to open lines of credit and make fraudulent purchases, according to the Volusia Sheriff’s Office.
In many cases, the vendors got suspicious, and orders for various types of equipment were rejected. But some went through. A scammer successfully ordered more than $7,000 in reusable respirators that were shipped to Miami.
The persistent fraud led to the discovery of other cases. A company that sells Starlink kits became suspicious of a high-end order from Volusia County’s purchasing director, and contacted her directly. The order was a fake. That led the company to realize that they previously received a very similar vendor order of 15 Starlink kits for about $48,000, which were delivered to a storage unit in Davie. The “vendor” never paid the invoice.
The VSO detective investigating the case began working with the company and police in South Florida to track down the Starlink buyer. Someone tried to activate one of the stolen Starlinks, which provided an exact location of the activation: an apartment in Miramar.
That led to the identification of 26-year-old Keith Merard, who lived at the Miramar apartment and was also the renter of the Davie storage unit where the Starlinks were delivered.
Detectives obtained video surveillance footage that showed Merard loading Starlink boxes out of the storage unit and into a black Ford SUV before leaving.
The investigation continued and led to a search warrant, which was executed at Merard’s apartment. Merard was arrested without incident on scene and confessed to his involvement in the scams.
Merard was determined to be the U.S.-based subject responsible for taking deliveries of fraudulently obtained orders, shipping them to their next destination, and converting cash to Bitcoin to transfer to unknown overseas partners.
Merard was booked at the Broward County Jail on charges of organized scheme to defraud and criminal use of personal identification information.
