Senior living bedbugs, jewelry, and a Florida nursing assistant’s license suspension
A certified nursing assistant took an opportunity created by bedbugs at a nursing home to steal $2,900 in jewelry from an 86-year-old resident, according to an emergency suspension order from the Florida Surgeon General.
The order that hit the license of Berline Rozin on Thursday relies heavily on information from a Martin County Sheriff’s Office arrest report from July 6. Rozin, 54, has pleaded not guilty to one count of third-degree grand theft from a person 65 years of age or older.
In addition to the license suspension, Rozin was fired from The Cabana at Jensen Dunes, the senior care community in the Jensen Beach area of St. Lucie County. While Rozin’s license address is in Deerfield Beach, the arrest report says she lives in Port St. Lucie. She worked at The Cabana at Jensen Dunes in the Jensen Beach area.
That’s where sheriff’s investigators say the bedbugs and the jewelry were.
Bedbugs and pawn shops
When an 86-year-old woman moved into The Cabana on May 17, the arrest report said, her room had bedbugs. She was moved to another room temporarily while the original room was treated to get rid of the bedbugs.
Whether the bedbugs were gone or not when the woman moved back into her room, she noticed several pieces of jewelry were gone. She described, among them, a gold pendant with her last name, a gold calendar pendant shaped like a heart with an emerald on her birthday date, and a round pendant with her zodiac sign.
Police said Rozin pawned several pieces at Port St. Lucie’s Colorado Pawn on May 23 and June 13, then, on June 17, Value Pawn at 2001 N. State Rd. 7 in Margate. The arrest report says Colorado Pawn and Value Pawn got Rozin’s driver’s license number on each of those visits, and Colorado Pawn supplemented that with video of Rozin trading in jewelry on June 13.
The arrest report says the estimated value of the jewelry stolen was $2,900 and that Rozin got $2,210 by pawning it.
The octogenarian identified the pawned jewelry as hers, the arrest report said, while Rozin tried to say they belonged to her mother, who died in 2021.
The pieces with the woman’s last name and an emerald indicating her birthday? Rozin told police she found those on a hallway floor.
The Cabana at Jensen Dunes fired Rozin, the suspension order said.
This story was originally published September 27, 2023 at 11:41 AM.
