Ex-Miami-Dade Court Overseer Accused of $ 100,000 Filing Fee and Fund theft – NBC 6 South Florida

A former supervisor of the Miami-Dade bailiff was arrested after authorities said he stole more than $ 100,000 in filing fees and deposit funds over a two-year period.

Tyrone Derise Smith, Jr., 35, has been charged with over $ 100,000 in grand theft and over $ 50,000 in organized fraud, both first degree crimes, according to the Miami-Dade District Attorney.

Smith served in the New Laws Division of the Family Courts Department for nearly 11 years until he resigned on June 4, 2018.

Miami-Dade corrections

Tyrone Derise Smith Jr.

After Smith’s resignation, an internal review was initiated after the discovery of a lack of funds, the prosecutor said.

Prosecutors said a man had complained that his civil lawsuit had not been brought through the court and a search of the court’s database revealed that he had not paid the filing fee.

The man insisted that he paid the fee in cash and had a receipt with him as evidence, but investigators discovered that the receipt was forged.

The issue led to an audit of all Smith’s transactions between August 2016 and April 2018, which revealed 201 cases Smith handled that appeared in the database as filed cases but showed no filing fees charged, prosecutors said.

The filing fees, all of which were paid in cash, came to $ 80,817, and some of the customers also had the fake receipts, prosecutors said.

Investigators searched Smith’s work computer and found a saved form that could provide the same fake receipt, prosecutors said.

Between filing fees and more than $ 28,000 in deposits that had been stolen, the total financial loss for the State of Florida and the Miami-Dade bailiff was $ 108,938.16, prosecutors said.

Smith was sent to jail and no legal information was available.

“When government employees steal, they are not only grabbing the public’s money, they are also wasting the public’s trust in their local government,” Miami-Dade prosecutor Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. “Such actions betray our community and can never be accepted or tolerated.”

The post Ex-Miami-Dade Court Overseer Accused of $ 100,000 Filing Fee and Fund theft – NBC 6 South Florida first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

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