By Angie DiMichele
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
LAUDERHILL, Fla. — A week after his arrest, a Lauderhill Police officer accused of using a dead man’s identity to take over his property without any legal authority has resigned from his position with the department.
The city announced in a news release Tuesday that it had begun termination proceedings against Officer Brian Sguros, 35, after an Internal Affairs investigation concluded, but the officer resigned before the city took final action.
| SPECIAL REPORT: Where is your agency losing time?
Sguros faces charges of official misconduct, criminal use of a deceased person’s personal identification information, criminal use of personal identification information, offense against users of computers and unlawful use of a two-way communications device stemming from his involvement with a home in the 4500 block of Northwest 12th Street, court records show. He pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday.
On July 11, 2022, Sguros responded to the home as a back-up officer after a neighbor called police and asked for a wellness check on her 71-year-old neighbor, Dennis Ionis West, whom she had not seen in a few weeks, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Over the course of several years, Sguros allegedly personally paid property taxes and a water utility account while both remained in West’s name and used West’s identity on a city building permit application, the affidavit said.
In the week following West’s death, Sguros allegedly represented himself to a Medical Examiner’s Office investigator as a friend of the man and said West had no living relatives. Sguros was listed as the informant on West’s death certificate, and several months after the initial death investigation, was legally authorized to release West’s remains to a cremation service business, the affidavit said.
In early 2025, Sguros and his wife filed an adverse possession claim for West’s property, which stated they took possession of the property Aug. 1, 2022 , and described their use of the property as “accommodation,” the affidavit said. It was that document that led a real estate investment company to find that West did, in fact, have several living relatives, who were his legal heirs.
Sguros in February this year filed a lawsuit against the company, Equinox Realty Holdings, LLC , which took lawful possession of the property in September or October 2025.
By Sguros’ account in sworn court filings, he spent over $200,000 fixing up West’s home between August 2022 and February 2025, according to the complaint in the civil case against the company. In the complaint, Sguros said no relatives came forward to claim West’s body, that he arranged for West’s funeral services “out of compassion,” and that he improved the neglected home out of concern as a Lauderhill police officer that it “would become a site of criminal activity and a public nuisance.”
Equinox Realty’s attorney filed a complaint to Lauderhill Police’s Internal Affairs Division in May, informing the department Sguros was pursuing civil remedies related the property, the affidavit said.
Police Chief Constance Stanley started an Internal Affairs investigation the same day the department received the complaint, the news release Tuesday said. Sguros was placed on paid administrative leave in July 2026 as the criminal investigation continued and unpaid leave after his arrest Oct. 20 before resigning.
The police department will report Sguros’ separation and the circumstances to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission.
His defense attorney James M. Stark in an email Tuesday emphasized the former officer’s “presumption of innocence” and urged all to “resist making a judgment until all of the facts of this case can be flushed out.”
©2026 South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Visit sun-sentinel.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
