Investigators say the two-year case in Flagler County grew into a wider fraud inquiry tied to more than $421,000 in property sales.
BUNNELL, FL — A 63-year-old Bartow woman was arrested after Flagler County investigators said she helped sell multiple properties she did not own, moving money from the deals through bank accounts and cryptocurrency transfers in a case that stretched beyond Florida.
Authorities say the case matters now because what began as two suspicious land sales in Palm Coast has widened into a multistate fraud investigation involving properties in Florida, Georgia and Colorado. Cheryl Annette Jefferson was arrested on a Flagler County fugitive warrant and charged with organized scheme to defraud over $50,000. Detectives say they have traced nearly $422,000 in deposits tied to the known sales, while leaving open the possibility that more victims could surface as the case moves ahead.
The investigation began in January 2024, when a woman called Flagler County’s emergency communications center and said a property she owned in Palm Coast’s S-Section had been sold to someone else. Investigators said she discovered the sale only after she tried to pay property taxes and learned the lot was no longer listed in her name. A few months later, in April 2024, detectives opened a second case involving a vacant lot in the city’s W-Section. In that case, a relative checking on the property found that a home had been built there without the owner’s knowledge, according to investigators. Records tied to the first sale listed the true owner as the seller, but detectives said the photo on the driver’s license used in the transaction was not the owner’s. Instead, they said, it showed Jefferson. That finding gave investigators a named suspect and pushed what had looked like isolated title problems into a criminal fraud case.
Detectives said bank and sale records helped them map out what happened next. According to the sheriff’s office, wire transfers from the sale of both Flagler County properties were deposited into a bank account Jefferson opened in December 2022. Investigators said she then wrote checks to herself and others and moved additional money into a separate account in her own name. They also said some of the funds were wired to a Coinbase account and converted to cryptocurrency before being sent to two accounts owned by men in Nigeria. The sheriff’s office has not publicly identified those men, and court records available Tuesday did not spell out whether any of them had been charged in Florida. What is known, investigators said, is that the bank account review pointed them to other possible cases. With help from the agency’s Real Time Crime Center, detectives said they identified two more cases in Lee County, one in Greene County, Georgia, and a civil case in Pueblo County, Colorado.
The broader picture shows how easily vacant land can become part of a paper-driven fraud scheme before owners realize something is wrong. In Flagler County, the known cases centered on lots in Palm Coast neighborhoods where an out-of-state owner might not visit often. One victim learned of the problem through a tax payment issue. In the other case, a family member physically went to the site and found a house standing there. John Diguilio, whose cousin owned one of the affected properties, told local television he was stunned by what he found and by how far the transaction had gone before the family knew about it. That detail underscores why these cases can be hard to catch early: a false identity, a forged or misused document and a completed closing can leave a legal owner trying to untangle a sale that already appears in official records. The sheriff’s office has not released the sale prices for each parcel, but investigators said the deposits tied to the four Florida cases and the Georgia case totaled $421,995.30.
Jefferson told detectives that she believed she was helping a friend and another man connected to him, according to the sheriff’s office. Investigators said she told them she thought one of those people was Brian Kelley of the country duo Florida Georgia Line and that the money was meant for the construction of a recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee. The sheriff’s office later obtained a search warrant for her cellphone with help from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators said a review of the phone found text messages between Jefferson and a contact listed as Chase Rice, the name of another country singer and songwriter, and concluded those messages showed her ongoing participation in receiving money and moving it into cryptocurrency. Authorities have not publicly said whether the people named in those messages were actually the performers Jefferson referenced, whether the names were being used falsely by someone else, or whether Jefferson had direct knowledge of the larger alleged scheme beyond the financial transactions. Those unanswered points are likely to matter as prosecutors decide how broadly to frame the case.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly cast the case as both a local property crime and a border-crossing fraud investigation. In the agency’s release, Staly said, “Crime knows no borders, and it doesn’t stop at the Florida Georgia Line.” He also mocked Jefferson’s explanation that she believed she was dealing with high-profile music figures, saying he did not see those friends getting her “out of the jam” she had put herself in. The DeFuniak Springs Police Department arrested Jefferson on March 20 in the Florida Panhandle on the Flagler County warrant, authorities said. She was booked into the Walton County Jail and later released on $100,000 bond. The sheriff’s office said the charge filed so far is organized scheme to defraud over $50,000, a felony under Florida law. The agency has not announced additional charges tied to the out-of-county or out-of-state transactions, and it has not said Tuesday whether prosecutors in other jurisdictions are preparing their own cases. That leaves the legal track still developing even as the basic facts of the Flagler County investigation are now public.
The scene described by investigators is less dramatic than many fraud cases, but no less disruptive for the people involved. There were no masked intruders or forced entries, only official-looking records, money moving through accounts and property owners finding out too late that something had changed on paper. One owner ran into the problem while trying to pay taxes. Another family, checking on a lot, found a newly built home where there should have been an empty parcel. Those are the moments when a clerical confusion turns into something much more serious. Diguilio told local reporters that the crime had been “flying under the radar” because few people were paying close attention to land deals like these. That comment captures the unease around the case. It is not just about one arrest. It is also about how public records, identity documents and remote transactions can be used in ways that leave owners, buyers and local officials trying to work backward after the money has moved and the documents have been filed.
For now, Jefferson’s arrest answers only part of the story. Investigators say they have connected her to multiple sales and nearly $422,000 in deposits, but the full number of victims, any role played by others and the final scope of charges remain unsettled. The next milestone is expected to come in court as the Flagler County case proceeds and investigators continue reviewing related transactions in other places.
Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.