FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - A trip to a bar cost a man thousands of dollars, but the thieves didn’t take his wallet during this nightmare night out.
They took his phone and cleaned out his bank account.
The young man and his friend didn’t meet up with any strangers, but he still believes someone must’ve dropped something in his drink.
Two weeks later, he’s still dealing with the aftermath of his nightmare night out.
“In the confusion, I didn’t realize I was robbed. I was moreso just thinking, wow, I got molested in my Uber home. That was awful. I’ll keep that a secret ‘til I die,” the victim said.
As bad as that sounds, a night out on the town earlier this month proved to be a lot worse for the 24-year-old from Plantation.
“The past two weeks has just been trying to really understand the full damage of the financial damages and the extent of that,” he said.
The Nova Southeastern University dental student asked not to be identified, but he wanted to share his story so that it doesn’t happen to someone else.
He said he met up with a friend at The Wharf in Fort Lauderdale the night of May 7.
Although he said they met up with some fellow students, nothing seemed out of the ordinary — until everything became a blur.
The college student said he vaguely remembers getting inside of what he thought was an Uber with two female strangers.
“They knew my name, they knew I was headed home,” he said.
He doesn’t remember going back to his apartment at all. Just waking up finding a stranger inside.
“I was like, ‘You need to leave,'” he said. “She said something of the sorts as, ‘I need to leave.’ I think she was surprised I had woken up.”
The woman left, only now the student couldn’t find his phone.
Only hours later when he tried to make a purchase did he realize thousands of dollars were missing.
“Specifically, $1,000 sent through Zelle and $4,900 sent through Venmo, and that’s actually the point in which I called the police,” he said.
It was not too different from what happened in Delray Beach recently, where a man said three women drugged him, unlocked his phone and stole thousands of dollars.
The future dentist is just starting to clean up his finances. At one point, his bank account had a negative balance of nearly half a million dollars.
“The most expensive thing we’re carrying on ourselves nowadays is our phone and the password,” he said, “and, you know, once you get ahold of that, you can do a lot of damage.”
The student said he is still going through his accounts to figure out what exactly happened.
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department is conducting an investigation into the robbery.
If you have any information on this robbery, call Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS. Remember, you can always remain anonymous, and you may be eligible for a reward of up to $5,000.
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