Miramar couple accused of PCH scam against elderly woman

By Wayne K. Roustan

MIRAMAR — A Miramar couple is accused of stealing about $22,000 from a 91-year-old Connecticut woman saying she had to pay a fee to collect her $2.5 million in prize money from the Publishers Clearing

House sweepstakes.

P a u l Wa y n e Walker, 49, and

Tr i c i a C l a r ke,

44, were arrested Monday and charged with exploitation of the elderly. They were released from the Broward County Jail Tuesday on $10,000 bond each, records show.

According to the arrest reports, in March 2018 the elderly woman was sent a fake letter from the Publishers Clearing House Corporation saying she had won $2.5 million but she had to pay $56,800 in fees to collect her winnings.

The woman called the phone number in the letter and was advised to pay the fees with cashier’s checks sent to four different people in Miramar, Pembroke Pines and Orlando. Walker and Clarke were two of those people living at the same Miramar address, detectives said.

The banks called the woman’s son to report a dozen suspicious cashier’s checks had been written for large amounts totaling more than $22,000.

Miramar police said they obtained bank statements and surveillance video showing Walker and Clarke depositing cashier’s checks in the summer of 2018.

Attempts to reach them for comment were unsuccessful.

Wayne K. Roustan can be reached at wkroustan@ sunsentinel.com or 561379-6119 or on Twitter @ WayneRoustan tally includes 30 non-residents.

2,382 additional cases and 16 new deaths. The county now has 272,098 confirmed cases and 4,075 deaths, including 25 non-residents.

Testing and positivity

Public health experts say the virus is considered under control when the COVID-19 test positivity rate is under 5%. But since Oct. 29, Florida has exceeded 5% in its widely publicized calculation for assessing the rate for testing of residents.

The state reported a daily positivity rate of 8.33% on Saturday, down from 8.74% the day before. This method of calculating positivity counts new infections only, but also counts repeat negative tests, which skews the figure downward.

According to the state, the new reported case numbers reflect the results of 137,515 COVID-19 tests of Florida residents received from labs in the past day, down from 148,911 results reported the day before.

Test results for 8,022 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 6.91%. That’s down from 7.33% the previous day.

Test results for 14,956 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 7.05%. That’s down from 7.25% the previous day.

Test results for 28,548 residents were reported Saturday, leading to a daily positivity rate of 8.11%. That’s down from 8.16% the previous day.

Deaths

The state’s pandemic data report shows a total of 20,473 Floridians have died from COVID-19. In addition, 291 non-residents have died after contracting the virus. Most of the fatalities reported Saturday happened over several weeks but were just confirmed in the past

day.

Hospitalizations

As of Saturday, there were 5,092 people hospitalized in Florida with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, according to the state Agency for Health Care Administration.

Hospitalizations hit a peak in late July of about 9,500 patients statewide, then dipped as low as 2,011 on Oct. 19. The numbers steadily increased throughout November and December.

Clarke

Walker