Suspicious string of Miami-Dade crashes leads cops to accuse woman of $52K insurance fraud
Local10.com, Chris Gothner, May 31, 2023
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Getting in three car wrecks over a span of three months, including crashes on back-to-back days, would be considered exceptionally bad luck for most people.
Police said a 29-year-old woman claimed she got in that many car crashes, but investigators didn’t chalk it up to mere bad luck: they said it was fraud.
Rosmery Nunez is accused of filing more than $52,000 worth of insurance claims for a series of 2022 crashes that either never happened or were staged or otherwise suspicious.
Nunez, who’s listed in an arrest warrant as having addresses in Palm Beach County and North Bay Village, faces seven felony counts in the case. Those charges include grand theft, filing false insurance claims, organized scheme to defraud and staging an accident.
Florida’s Bureau of Insurance Fraud investigated the case.
Crash #1
Police already made one arrest in the first alleged crash, an apparent phantom hit-and-run involving alleged co-conspirators Lazaro Yosvel Pacheco and Jose Froilan Lopez Ramirez.
They said Nunez, alongside Pacheco, 33, and Lopez Ramirez, 50, claimed they were in a crash near Sweetwater on July 27.
According to the warrant, Nunez never filed a police report on the purported crash involving her grey Toyota Corolla, but the three did file insurance claims for therapy.
Police said Pacheco and Nunez’s stories didn’t match up. They arrested Pacheco Friday morning, while Lopez Ramirez was listed as being at large; Nunez was also considered at large at the time.
Crash #2
The very next day, Lopez Ramirez was driving Nunez’s Corolla, with Nunez in the passenger’s seat, when a man hit them while he changed lanes along West 84th Street in Hialeah.
Authorities listed the other driver as a witness rather than a co-defendant.
Nunez and Lopez Ramirez filed medical claims after the crash.
Crash #3
Nunez later claimed to have been in a crash during the late-night hours of Oct. 3 at the intersection of Southwest Eighth Avenue and Ninth Street in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, the warrant states.
She said she was driving a brown Cadillac SRX with Yasiel Moya Leon and “accidentally dropped her cellular phone on the floorboard” while approaching a stop sign and rear-ended Jaquimi Leon while reaching for the phone.
Police, however, were suspicious. They said everyone acted as if they didn’t know each other and Moya Leon didn’t provide police his second last name, simply identifying himself as “Yasiel Moya.”
According to the warrant, there may be a good reason he didn’t: Jaquimi Leon happened to be his aunt.
Moya Leon claimed that he and Nunez were following his aunt to the grocery store when the crash happened, but police were suspicious that they would be doing such a thing so late at night, the warrant says.
Jaquimi Leon said the two were following her to help her with grocery bags, police said. Both she and her nephew are co-defendants in the case; it’s not clear if they’ve already been arrested or are at large.
Police said Nunez filed medical claims after the crash.