A Florida cop who has since been arrested is accused of purchasing multiple items, including a meal at Wendy’s, using credit card info she stole off a dead man.
Publicly available jail records from Osceola County show that 25-year-old Dianne Ferreira, the now-former officer in question, was arrested on Tuesday and has since been released.
The arrest, as well as details of the case, were announced during a joint conference with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office and the St. Cloud Police Department. Ferreira had been an employe of the latter since August 2021. In February 2022, she was certified as a law enforcement officer and had been on the road “as a solo police officer” for roughly 11 months without prior discipline at the time of the alleged crime. She is no longer employed by the department, with resignation paperwork reported as showing that she “resigned while being investigated.”
As explained in the WKMG-captured news conference footage below, Ferreira’s charges span two felonies and a misdemeanor, including fraudulent use of a credit card. The transactions were spotted in early April, at which point an investigation was launched.
“We respond as law enforcement with the firefighters and she happened to be the one that responded that day,” Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez said of the call during which Ferreira is alleged to have stolen the info. “We ask for the ID sometimes for a deceased person to make sure we have everything right in our system and maybe it was at that point she took the opportunity to take the photographs of the credit card.”
Lopez added that he does not believe this is the first instance of the suspect stealing credit card info, stating that you “gotta be a pretty cold-hearted person” to do such a thing.
“That’s pretty cold, pretty ruthless,” he told reporters.
As for what is alleged to have been purchased using the stolen credit card info, police say they discovered “several unauthorized charges from a deceased person” including seven gas transactions, mobile food orders, Wendy’s food, and a single charge at a hotel. Additionally, another gas transaction and eyelash extensions were attempted to be placed on the card but were declined; at that point, the sheriff said, the prior charges had been discovered.
As for whether “financial issues” played a part, Lopez pushed back against any such speculation due to the nature of what was purchased.
“There’s no excuse,” he told reporters. “I mean, come on, you’re gonna go get your nails and your eyelashes and you’re ordering food from Wendy’s?”
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