SWEETWATER, Fla. – Police arrested two executives of a South Florida contracting company after they claimed the pair engaged in a six-figure scam targeting a Sweetwater senior.
Recommended Videos
Yordanka Riech, 51, and Geisy Valdes Caballero, 48, are each facing a charge of theft from an elderly person, a first-degree felony.
Authorities said Riech is the CEO of South Florida Home Builders & Engineers Corp., while Valdes is its supervisor and project coordinator. Records show the business is based at 7380 W. 20th Ave. in Hialeah.
Investigators with the Sweetwater Police Department said the 67-year-old victim signed a $38,000 contract with the company in June 2022 to convert his garage into a living area and address code violations at his home in the 10600 block of Southwest Fifth Street.
The next month, he signed a $55,000 contract “for a new addition consisting of a family room, master bedroom, master closet, master bathroom, and a covered terrace attached to the main house,” police said.
“Despite limited demolition work being performed in the garage, such as sealing off the garage windows, no permits were obtained, and no substantial construction work took place,” the SPD report states. “A mess and construction debris were left in the garage and, to this day, remain untouched.”
No work was ever done on the second project and Valdes kept giving the man “excuses,” police said, including that he needed a bigger septic tank, leading to a third contract, in April 2024, for $20,000 worth of septic work.
The man ultimately handed the duo more than $113,000 of “his hard-earned retirement savings” with little to show for it besides the mess in his garage and several new code violations, the report states.
Riech and Valdes were taken into custody at their shared home in the Westchester area on Wednesday.
Jail records show Valdes was already out on felony bond on charges of grand theft and falsely advertising herself as a contractor.
Records show she was arrested by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office on June 24 after deputies accused her of ghosting a client after taking $26,000 for a Westchester home remodeling job.
Records show Riech was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $1,500 bond while Valdes was being held on a $15,000 bond.