Florida City couple claimed tortillas started kitchen fire, but cops say it was arson and fraud

www.local10.com, Chris Gothner, November 20, 2024

FLORIDA CITY, Fla. – A Florida City couple’s claim that unattended tortillas sparked a kitchen fire went up in smoke after Citizens Insurance investigated their hefty insurance claim, authorities say.

Authorities said Erick Turrubiates claimed that it all started while he was on the toilet. They said his wife, Auren Martinez Castillo, claimed she had been sleeping off a migraine. But police said their stories precipitating the $53,000 claim didn’t match the evidence. Now, the couple, both 26, are facing charges including arson and insurance fraud following their arrests on Tuesday.

A 41-year-old insurance adjuster, Yoan Gonzalez, is also being charged and is listed in the report as being “at large.”

According to Miami-Dade police, it all began on Dec. 29 at the couple’s home in the 800 block of Southwest Seventh Terrace.

An arrest report states that Turrubiates claimed he left tortillas on the stove while he went to the bathroom to defecate. While on the toilet, police said he claimed something smelled — from the outside. It was smoke, police said he claimed, coming from burning tortillas, but the couple never bothered to call the fire department.

Authorities said the couple would file a $53,998 insurance claim with the help of Gonzalez after claiming that the supposed fire damaged their “kitchen cabinets, backsplash, kitchen wall and ceiling.”

The report states that a forensic investigator hired by Citizens “deemed this fire to be incendiary and ruled out any possibility of an accidental fire, noting numerous inconsistent fire patterns on the backsplash, upper mounted cabinets, wall and ceiling, which could only have happened through human intervention and were purposely done.”

Police said the investigator, among other things, “did not observe or find any indication of soot or smoke, nor was it possible to reach the master bedroom bathroom” as Turrubiates claimed.

Authorities believe an open flame device was used.

In an interview with detectives, Gonzalez, a public adjuster for more than two decades, “when asked whether the damages seemed suspicious, (said) that the insured’s story of the facts made sense considering what he saw, but he otherwise was not a fire expert and only goes off what they told him,” the report states.

“He knows that the fire department was not called, but he opined that was not unusual considering the damages were relatively small in his opinion,” police wrote.

Police said all of the evidence led them to charge the three in the scheme.

Turrubiates and Martinez Castillo are facing counts of first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit arson, filing false or fraudulent insurance claims and second-degree grand theft.

It’s not clear what charges Gonzalez will face.

Turrubiates and Martinez Castillo were being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $25,000 bond as of Wednesday afternoon, according to jail records.

News article: Florida City couple claimed tortillas started kitchen fire, but cops say it was arson and fraud