Woman Jailed After Being Mistaken For Thief Who Used Her Driver's License: Lawsuit

Karen Maloof, 54, was arrested six years after she reported her license stolen in connection with a crime in a city she'd never even been to, her attorney said.

A Georgia woman is suing police in Florida after she was arrested, extradited and jailed for days in connection with a crime that was actually committed by someone who’d used her stolen driver’s license, a new lawsuit says.

In the suit, Karen Maloof, 54, said that a Palm Bay Police Department officer who wrote a probable cause statement missed “obvious red flags” and failed to meet basic investigative standards before she was arrested in connection with a U-Haul van that was rented — and then stolen — by someone using her ID. Maloof filed the lawsuit last week against the officer and the department in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, accusing them of falsely arresting her.

Maloof first reported her Georgia driver’s license stolen in 2017 and received a replacement soon after, according to the lawsuit. She didn’t run into any issues with the license until 2023, when federal law enforcement officers arrested her at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and informed her that she had a warrant for her arrest in Palm Bay, Florida, a place she had never been to, the suit says.

But someone had fraudulently used Maloof’s stolen driver’s license as well as a false phone number and email address to rent the moving truck online from a Palm Bay U-Haul store, according to the lawsuit. They never returned the van, and the store decided to press charges after sending a demand letter to an address that the thief had provided — which, the suit says, was not the address on Maloof’s license.

The lawsuit then alleges that Palm Beach police officer Cody Spaulding did not make any attempt to contact Maloof at her Georgia address and that he also didn’t verify the photo provided to U-Haul during the booking process was actually of Maloof. His sworn statement led to the issue of the warrant for Maloof’s arrest.