Medical assistant steals patient’s credit card and shops at Publix, police say

A medical assistant at a Coral Springs doctor’s office is accused of stealing a patient’s credit card and using it to go shopping at Publix.

Dulce Aleman, 51, is now charged with credit card theft, illegal use of a credit card and fraudulent use of an ID without consent of a victim 60 years of age or older.

She’s also charged with violating her probation, and police noted she was arrested in 2018 following a similar incident at Northwest Medical Center.

Her attorney declined to comment on the case June 1.

The victim reported to police that on March 2, after a doctor’s appointment that day, she noticed her credit cards weren’t in her wallet anymore and were floating around in the bottom of her purse, according to an arrest affidavit.

The woman said she went through her cards and noticed one was missing. Then a few weeks later, she received her statement and noticed a $103.40 charge on the missing card from the day she had the doctor’s appointment, although she hadn’t used the card in months, according to the affidavit.

Security camera footage from Publix showed the person who used the card was a woman wearing a sweatshirt and scrubs, police said. The doctor in charge of the medical practice identified her as Aleman from the footage, according to the affidavit.

Aleman, who worked at the practice for about four years, said she used the credit card and threw it in the trash afterward, but denied stealing it from the patient’s purse, police said.

The employee turned herself in at the Coral Springs Police Department on May 27 and was booked in Broward jail, where she was being held on no bond as of June 1 for the violating probation charge.