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Counterfeit check charging question

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February 18, 2004, 16:32
Cynthia Morales
Counterfeit check charging question
I have a case where a woman presented some purported checks on which she had forged the name of the supposed account holder. But there is no such account holder, no such bank account - the checks are wholly fraudent. There is other evidence which suggests that this is part of an ongoing scheme of the defendant's to order and pass counterfeit checks (though she claims these were "found in the trash" and she just tried to use them). We are filing this as a plain SJF forgery "purported to be the act of [person on check] who did not authorize such act" (as the defendant confessed to forging the name of the person on the check without that "person's" consent) but I was wondering if anyone had dealt with a similar situation before and how they charged it so maybe we can add/change the charges to something more precise and maybe more serious. A SJF seems awfully weak for this kind of scheme. Any thoughts?
February 19, 2004, 22:24
Jeff Swain
We just go with forgery also. I guess you could aggregate and go with theft, but we haven't seen any of these go over $20,000 such that it would serve a purpose to aggregate. If you're looking for more than 2 years, maybe you could file multiple offenses (if you have multiple fake checks) and ask the judge to stack them?