Four different suspects, at four separate locations were arrested by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Criminal Employment Squad for stealing the identity of one woman and using that identity to gain employment.
The 82nd Criminal Employment/ID Theft case investigation began after the victim reported to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office that she had been denied food stamps because of earned wages reported to the State, wages that were not earned by her but by possibly six different people.
Sheriff Arpaio says the investigation confirmed that six different suspects were using the same identity at six different places of employment. Search warrants were served by Sheriff’s detectives at four of those locations; Chompies in Tempe, Zipps Bar and Grill in Tempe, Bradford Allen in Tempe, and Best Western in Guadalupe, all of which have cooperated with Sheriff’s detectives.
“These ID theft cases are not victimless,” Arpaio says. “The past operations have resulted in families being denied money for food, and that is a serious issue.”
Detectives arrested Eva Maria Lucio-Diaz (38), Martha Patricia Gonzalez-Florez (38), Letecia Diaz-Jimeniz (41), and Alicia Surrano-Frias (38) last week and booked them into the 4th Avenue Jail on multiple counts of Aggravated Identity Theft and Forgery. All have been identified as being in the US illegally. All have admitted to Sheriff’s detectives that they knowingly used the stolen identity of the victim for work.
The remaining suspects are still under investigation at this time.
Sheriff Arpaio notes that the victim in this case has something in common with the recent cases his office has completed recently. They all were denied food stamps by the State.
This case makes the seventh Criminal Employment/ID Theft investigation since the beginning of the year for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, where 19 suspects have been arrested.
“These investigations clearly demonstrate how serious ID theft crimes can be for the victims, impacting their lives in the most basic of ways,” Arpaio says. “The majority of the 19 arrested were in the US illegally.”
Since 2008, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has arrested over 782 suspects for criminal employment/ID theft.