Eleven people were arrested in Miami for participating in a scheme to fraudulently collect disabled parking permits.
In August, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office launched “Operation Parking Denied,” as part of a larger crackdown in the state that began as a larger effort from the Miami-Dade County Tax Collector’s Office to try to track down people misusing the disabled parking permit system and ensure more spots are available for the truly elderly or disabled.
As part of that crackdown, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office Public Corruption Section announced in a statement on Facebook that’s since resurfaced online that they’d arrested eleven individuals who were given disabled parking permits after a broker allegedly provided applicants with disability certification forms that contained a forged physician’s signature, thus allowing them to obtain the permits without having any real medical need for them.
“This operation sends a clear message: exploiting programs intended to assist individuals with legitimate disabilities will not be tolerated,” the statement from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office reads.
On August 13, the County Tax Collector’s Office announced that it had conducted an audit of some 75,000 applicants throughout the county and found more than 6,000 of them did not pass the final audit phase…