A 22-year-old man who stole nearly $1 million from DoorDash drivers was fatally shot in an apparent dispute with three men in New York.
David Smith was found suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in a parking lot at the Heritage Homes apartments in New Rochelle, NY on Monday, Jan. 6. He was rushed to a hospital where he died.
Police say Smith was due to appear in a Connecticut courtroom on Wednesday, Jan. 8 to either accept or reject a plea deal in the $1 million DoorDash fraud case.
Three men were arrested and charged with Smith’s murder. None of the suspects were current or former DoorDash drivers.
Officials said Smith’s murder was not connected to the DoorDash fraud case in Connecticut, the Stamford Advocate reported.
Smith’s death means the DoorDash fraud case will be closed and the $700,000 seized by police will be returned to his victims eventually.
The complex case began in June 2023 when Stamford police responded to a domestic violence call at an apartment complex in Stamford, Connecticut.
Police spoke with a pregnant woman who said Smith, then 21, choked her and pointed a loaded gun at her head. Smith was gone when police arrived, so they got the woman’s permission to search his apartment for the gun.
In an affidavit, police claimed they found the gun along with evidence of a phishing scheme that targeted DoorDash drivers. They also recovered 109 payment cards, only one of which was in Smith’s name; various California driver’s licenses, paychecks, and a “large amount of stacks of cash” totaling $52,410 in the apartment.”
Police said in the affidavit that the licenses, payment cards and cash, along with five safes found in the apartment, were all seized as evidence in the investigation. One of the safes, which police said was left open, contained an additional $146,260, according to the affidavit.
Another safe contained $534,570 in cash. In total, police seized $733,240 from Smith’s apartment, according to the search warrant.
Smith was charged with third-degree assault on a pregnant person, risk of injury to a minor, second-degree strangulation, illegal possession of a high-capacity magazine, first-degree reckless endangerment, and other charges.
The cash and other evidence taken from the apartment led to separate charges of first-degree larceny, third-degree identity theft, two counts of second-degree forgery, trafficking in personal identifying information and first-degree computer crime.
Smith posted a $250,000 bond and was living in Mount Vernon under 24-hour GPS monitoring when he was killed.
Authorities believe Smith may have used phishing text links to steal the paychecks of more than 700 DoorDash drivers, the affidavit said. The affidavit stated Smith stole “in excess of $950,000” from DoorDash drivers while perpetrating the scheme.
