FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. \u2014 Federal agents arrested a Fort Lauderdale woman on Tuesday in connection with what prosecutors said is an eight-figure fraud case involving scammed seniors and two notorious gangs.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Alonzo, 41, is facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in Fresno, California federal court. Several others, whose names were redacted in court documents, are also accused.<\/p>\n
Federal authorities said the conspiracy stretched from California to South Florida to Mexico and Central America.<\/p>\n
According to a federal indictment from the Eastern District of California, the participants \u201ctargeted persons over the age of (55)\u201d and contacted victims who owned or previously owned timeshares.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said the participants falsely claimed to be attorneys, paralegals and government officials and told the victims that they were entitled to receive money \u201crelated to legal settlements concerning their timeshares.\u201d<\/p>\n
Authorities said the victims were told they \u201chad to make initial payments amounting to a percentage of the expected recovery\u201d in order to receive the funds. <\/p>\n
According to the indictment, the participants \u201cextract(ed) additional and increasing amounts of money from the victims,\u201d who \u201cwere directed to send the payments to fictitious business names (DBA) and shell companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the shell companies identified in the complaint was Horizons 180, LLC, registered to Alonzo<\/a> using an address at an office building connected to Fort Lauderdale\u2019s Galleria mall. Alonzo, who lives in the Lauderdale Manors neighborhood, dissolved the company<\/a> in August.<\/p>\n The participants, authorities said, would then launder the funds by sending them from the shell companies \u201cto other bank accounts located in the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico and Nicaragua.\u201d<\/p>\n Investigators said the participants bilked the victims out of more than $30 million \u2015 and some of the money went to the Nuestra Familia and Norte\u00f1o criminal organizations, two primarily Mexican-American gangs centered in California.<\/p>\n Court records show Alonzo was scheduled to appear before a Fort Lauderdale federal judge at 11 a.m. Tuesday.<\/p>\n As of Tuesday morning, she wasn\u2019t listed in Federal Bureau of Prisons records or those of the Broward Sheriff\u2019s Office, which regularly holds inmates on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service.<\/p>\n \ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. \u2014 Federal agents arrested a Fort Lauderdale woman on Tuesday in connection with what prosecutors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-14075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}