A 52-year-old Santa Monica was arrested on Saturday, Oct. 24, after trying to cash a fraudulent check, saying he had been offered $400 to cash it from a person on Craigslist to do the illegal deed.
At 1:19 pm officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were called out to the Wells Fargo Bank, located at 170 Pier Ave. in order to investigate a report of a fraudulent check cashing attempt.
When the officers arrived they discovered that the suspect was still at the teller window talking with the bank employee.
The officers detained the suspect and spoke with the bank employee who told the officers that the suspect had entered the bank earlier and had approached the teller window.
The employee then added that the suspect had told her that he wanted to cash a payroll check.
The employee said that she had recognized the payroll check to be fraudulent and had told the suspect that since his account with them showed a negative balance he would need to correct that situation before any such checks could be cashed.
She told the officers that at that point the suspect’s mood had morphed from one of relative calm and serenity into a fiery kind of anger and he had ranted and raved that the check be cashed.
The officers then spoke with the suspect who told them that he had been looking for work on www.craigslist.com (a classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, items wanted, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums) and had been offered $400 if he would cash this check that was made out for a total of $1,700. The suspect didn’t think that this was at all suspicious.
The officers arrested this Santa Monica man and he was charged with forgery by check. Bail was set at $20,000.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of The Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
