A man’s account of sudden exhaustion, a snapping noise and an empty watch box anchors the allegations against Lynda Mae Crouse.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. — The detail that stayed with the man was a sound from his living room. Police say he had begun feeling strangely tired when he heard what he later described as a clap. Hours later, after waking up confused, he opened his Rolex box and found a $98,400 watch missing.
That recollection became one piece of a Hallandale Beach police case against Lynda Mae Crouse, 32, who was arrested in September on a Broward County warrant tied to the April 12 encounter. Crouse is accused of second-degree grand theft. Investigators allege she deliberately incapacitated the man and took his gold Rolex Presidential, but the man did not undergo toxicology testing. The allegation that he was drugged is therefore based on his symptoms, the timing he described and comparisons police drew to other cases, rather than a lab result from this incident.
The man told investigators that he first met Crouse around midnight at the Carousel Club inside Gulfstream Park. They exchanged Instagram information and parted after a short conversation. About an hour later, he arranged an Uber to pick her up and bring her to his residence. Once there, the two had alcoholic drinks. He later emphasized to police that he had not consumed enough, in his view, to explain losing consciousness or becoming unable to remain awake.
What happened after he stepped away from the living room became central to the affidavit. The man went to his bedroom to change clothes, leaving Crouse alone near the area where the Rolex box had been kept. He said he then began to feel “funny” and extremely tired. While still away from the room, he heard the distinctive sound. When he returned, he told police, Crouse seemed different and announced that she was going home. His fatigue and confusion increased rapidly, and he fell asleep within minutes of her departure.
He woke several hours later still feeling abnormal. The noise came back to mind, and he went straight to the watch box. The Rolex was gone. He later told investigators he believed the sound he heard had been the lid closing. Police described the missing watch as a gold 40 mm Rolex Presidential with baguette diamond hour markers and round diamonds covering the bezel. The man supplied a signed appraisal placing its value at $98,400, giving investigators documentation for the value of the property he reported stolen.
The sound itself does not establish who handled the box or what happened to the watch, and the affidavit does not describe a witness who saw Crouse take it. Instead, police assembled several pieces of circumstantial evidence. The man said Crouse had been alone in the room where the watch was located. He said his condition changed suddenly while she was there. He reported that she left immediately after the sound. The watch was gone when he awoke, and he later selected Crouse from a six-person photo lineup. Investigators treated those facts together as support for the theft allegation.
The suspected drugging presents a different evidentiary question. The man did not go to a hospital or provide a sample that could be tested after the episode. In a sworn statement, he said the unusual sensation persisted for more than a day. That report helped explain why he believed something other than alcohol had affected him, but it could not identify a substance. Hallandale Beach police turned instead to other investigations involving Crouse that they said showed similar circumstances.
According to the Broward affidavit, investigators found four active Miami-Dade cases in which men allegedly met Crouse at bars or nightclubs while wearing costly watches. Police said the men later went with her to homes or hotels, woke feeling as though they had been drugged and discovered that their watches were missing. The affidavit referenced cases handled by Miami, Miami Beach and Aventura police. Those investigations were not convictions, and their existence does not prove the Broward allegation. Police cited them as part of the reasoning behind their theory.
One of the Miami cases included a toxicology finding that investigators considered significant. Authorities said a victim tested positive for zolpidem, a prescription sleep medication. The Broward affidavit noted that zolpidem can produce sedation, confusion and memory impairment, particularly when mixed with alcohol, and police said those effects resembled what the Hallandale Beach man reported. Investigators then alleged that a similar substance had been given to him. No public toxicology result confirms that conclusion in the Broward case.
Crouse’s arrest came on Sept. 11, months after the reported theft. Local 10 reported that Seminole tribal police encountered her during a trespassing-related call and found the outstanding Broward warrant after checking her information. She was booked into jail. Subsequent reports said a magistrate set bond at $2,500 and ordered her to have no contact with the alleged victim. She was released after posting bond. The news reports reviewed did not identify a lawyer speaking on her behalf at the time.
The delay between the April complaint and the September arrest did not change the central facts described publicly, but it gave investigators time to compare the Hallandale Beach report with other open cases. The affidavit was authored in April, according to Local 10. By the time the arrest became public, police were emphasizing not just the value of the missing watch but the alleged similarities among reports from multiple jurisdictions. That shift made the case more than a single disputed encounter while still leaving each allegation to be proven separately.
There was also some inconsistency in early coverage of the exact charges tied to the Broward arrest. Law&Crime and Local 10 reported a second-degree grand theft count, while NBC 6 South Florida said records listed robbery and grand theft. The reviewed public reporting did not include a later filing that clearly reconciled those descriptions. For that reason, second-degree grand theft is the charge most consistently supported by the available accounts, while any broader charging description should remain attributed to the arrest-record reporting that carried it.
The valuation also shaped the seriousness of the theft allegation. The man did not merely estimate the price for investigators; he produced a signed appraisal. Local 10 reported that the watch had a retail price below the appraisal figure, while the police account relied on the $98,400 appraisal when describing the loss. That difference does not resolve who took the watch, but it explains why public reports repeatedly described the missing property as worth nearly $100,000.
The watch had not been publicly reported recovered in the sources reviewed, and police did not publicly name the man. Those absences matter because the known case is built largely from his account, documentary proof of the watch’s value, his identification of Crouse and the investigators’ comparison with other cases. The strongest scientific evidence mentioned anywhere in the affidavit belongs to a different Miami investigation, not to the Hallandale Beach incident itself.
What remains unresolved is the meaning of the evidence police assembled from one late-night encounter: a remembered sound, sudden exhaustion, an empty watch box and a later photo identification. Those details support the police theory described in the affidavit, but Crouse has not been convicted and no later resolution was located in the reviewed reporting through Oct. 21.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 21, 2026.