In September 2016, Carol Fosgate’s husband died after a long illness.
Eight days later, her mail carrier told Fosgate that someone had recently filled out a form to have her husband’s mail forwarded to an address in Texas.
Fosgate canceled the request to have her husband’s mail forwarded and two weeks later, four credit cards, applied for in his name, showed up in her mailbox.
A short time later, a credit agency contacted Fosgate to tell her that someone rented a unit at West Winds Apartments on East Winds Drive in Orlando in her dead husband’s name.
Orlando police believe Marie Payen and her son Claude Bernard somehow got ahold of Fosgate’s husband’s personal information and were trying to steal his identity.
According to court documents, Bernard “acted as if (the apartment employee) was talking to ‘Joseph’ the entire time that he was handling the lease documents.”
U.S. Postal Service officials said the only protection residents have when someone tries to fraudulently forward their mail to a different address is a letter confirming the change that is sent to the former address.
Payen and Bernard were arrested and each faces several fraud charges.
Cox Media Group
