A Broward County man has been sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison after a drive-by shooting at a Lauderhill home led to the discovery of \u201ca calculated fraud operation,\u201d federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Keith Bethel, 34, was found guilty by a jury in September of charges of possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon, possession of 15 or more unauthorized access devices and aggravated identity theft. He was sentenced to 104 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, earlier this month, court records show.<\/p>\n
On July 18, 2023, Broward County law enforcement received an alert from ShotSpotter, the gunshot-detection technology, about a shooting in the 3000 block of Northwest Seventh Street in Lauderhill, according to a federal criminal complaint and a probable cause affidavit filed in Broward County court.<\/p>\n
Officers entered a home that had bullet holes on the outside with a back door left ajar, according to the federal criminal complaint. Numerous credit cards, blank checks, electronic devices and \u201ca large amount of suspected narcotics\u201d were lying in plain view inside.<\/p>\n
While searching the home later that evening after obtaining a warrant, officers found identifying documents of Bethel\u2019s in a bedroom, a box with suspected cocaine hidden in a closet, 50 individually packed bags of cannabis, 21 rounds of ammunition and a Century Arms Draco 9mm firearm, the complaint said.<\/p>\n
Folders with personal identifying information of multiple victims were also found inside, along with stolen mail, blank checks and \u201ca ledger with scripts and instructions for defrauding individuals and financial institutions,\u201d federal prosecutors said in a news release. Among the victims of the identity theft were a Florida basketball coach, a foster care worker, a retired nurse and an U.S. Air Force firefighter.<\/p>\n
Lab results confirmed the narcotics totaled 125 grams of cocaine and nearly 300 grams of cannabis, according to the complaint. Testing also showed that Bethel\u2019s DNA was found on the gun.<\/p>\n
Bethel was being tracked by a GPS monitor at the time of the drive-by shooting after an earlier felony conviction, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The GPS monitor showed he had gone to a park in Lauderhill after the shooting. When officers stopped him and another man he was with, they said they were going to play basketball, though the park was closed and all of the lights were turned off, the Broward probable cause affidavit said.<\/p>\n
Bethel has filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, court records show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Broward County man has been sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison after a drive-by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[506,112,28,249,251,250,114,8701,115,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-167760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-broward-county","9":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-fort-lauderdale","12":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","13":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news","14":"tag-latest-headlines","15":"tag-lauderhill","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167760","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=167760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}