Teacher Sentenced For Stealing Students’ IDs

A former Broward County, Florida teacher was sentenced July 23 to six months of house arrest after she used the identities of 17 of her former students to try to get fraudulent credit cards.

Sheyla Diaz, 44, had pleaded guilty in May to a federal identity theft charge, admitting she completed credit applications in the names of her former students at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, Fla., according to a report in South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel.

Diaz, of Pembroke Pines, Fla., got students' personal information from forms documenting their community service hours, according to her lawyer.

Federal prosecutors said only three of Diaz’s credit card applications were approved and she never made any purchases using the cards.

"My crime was egregious and I lost everything near and dear to me," Diaz told U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn at the Fort Lauderdale federal courthouse during her sentencing hearing.

After Diaz’s house arrest, she will be on probation for two-and-one-half years. She also will be barred from being a teacher, according to federal prosecutor Marc Anton.