Infamous Impersonating Teen Charged As A Fake Miami Beach Cop
MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) - A Central Florida teen already facing charges that he impersonated a physician's assistant and worked in a hospital apparently still wants to be someone else, but may have traded a gun for a stethoscope. 18-year-old Matthew Scheidt spent the night in a Miami-Dade jail, charged with impersonating a Miami Beach cop.
The teen, who lives in Orlando with his mother, was 17 in August when he was arrested after he was found at the Osceola Regional Medical Center allegedly posing as a medical assistant. Police said he had been working in the Emergency Room for a few days, after convincing someone at the hospital to issue him an access badge.
Even though Scheidt is awaiting trial on felony impersonation charges in Osceola County, he was found early Thursday morning on Washington Avenue in Miami Beach, driving what appeared to a cop to be an undercover police car, typing on a laptop computer in the front seat. When the officer, who was not in a marked police car, pulled along side the car, he said the driver looked at him and asked why he wasn't wearing a seat belt.
The Miami Beach cop said the the driver, later identified as Scheidt, told him he was a police officer for Miami Beach. When a second officer arrived, the police arrest form claims Schiedt admitted he was not a cop, and told police he had no weapons in the car.
That story fell apart when police searched the car and found the teen was packing. According the the arrest report, Scheidt had a fully loaded pistol under the seat, a Taser ready to use, handcuffs, and an Osceola County Sheriff's shirt. Police also recovered an Osceola County Sheriff's badge, police type radios, and other police-type gear.
That's when the fake cop was taken into custody by the real cops, and charged with impersonating a police officer and two counts of carrying a concealed weapon.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Scheidt apparently has a long history of impersonation. As a teen, he was bounced from a police explorer program for repeatedly wearing police equipment in public, according to the newspaper.
The report also said Scheidt tried to lie about his age in his early teens to serve as a hospital volunteer.
While he was working as a physicians assistant at the Osceola county hospital, officials found he had allegedly done patient examinations, restrained some unruly patients, and even performed CPR, correctly, on a patient who later died of an overdose.
Following the discovery of his impersonation, the hospital was investigated and last week, a state report criticized personnel management policies because nobody checked out the teen before giving him a badge. The incident, which made national headlines, caused major changes at the hospital.
Scheidt was released on bond Thursday afternoon.
