HOROSCOPE

Thieves attempt to defraud Earle of $7,000

Earle targeted by check theft scammers

By Mark Randall

news@theeveningtimes.com

An attempt to defraud the City of Earle of close to $7,000 was thwarted by an alert employee at a Wells Fargo Bank.

Mayor Sherman Smith told the City Council that a scammer recently cashed three checks that looked exactly like the ones used to pay the bills from the city’s General Fund.

“We had somebody who got into our general fund account and somehow wrote a check on the city for $2,065,” Smith said.

“They got the information and made it look exactly like our account. They made it look like my signature and they made it look like Cynthia’s.”

City Clerk Cynthia Conner added that a person from a state in the northeastern United States cashed three checks written on the city’s account — one for $2,166, a second for $2,149, and a third for $2,065.

Fortunately for the city, a manager at Wells Fargo became suspicious and called her to verify because the man was attempting to cash the third check.

“They called to verify and said ‘have you all written some checks to a David Bums?”’ Conner said. “I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ I just knew that I hadn’t written checks to this guy.”

Conner said the checks looked like the ones the city uses down to the account number and routing number, except that it had First National Bank of Earle printed instead of First National Bank in Forrest City.

The checks also were not in the proper sequence, Conner said.

“The sequence was much higher than the one I am in,” Conner said.

The bank caught two of the three checks, but the one for $2,065 was cashed. “There are some things on the check that don’t look like ours,” Conner said. “But no one called to verify the first check.”

Conner said the man who cashed the check is retired and said he was contacted by someone online who wanted him to do some consulting work. The individual had to return 90 percent of the check amount.

Conner filed a report with the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Department and the city has since been reimbursed.

Conner said she was told

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by the Arkansas Municipal League that forged municipal check fraud is happening all over the state.

“This is not just happening to Earle,” Conner said.

West Memphis recently found itself victimized by a scammer who stole a utility check from a Dallas Post Office and attempted to get away with $175,000 intended for Entergy. The thieves attempted to duplicate the check and alter the payee.

According to West Memphis officials, a bank in Alabama got suspicious of the transaction when the money showed up in a new account. The city put a stop payment on the check and alerted authorities.

That was the second time West Memphis has been victimized. Thieves — ironically at the same Dallas Post Office — scanned a check in 2014 and changed the numbers and cashed them through Allied Bank and Bank of America electronically for $450,000.

West Memphis is now having the bank cross check each item against a list made of city checks.

Conner said unfortunately First National does not offer cross check, however, as a precaution she is sending the bank a list of all the checks that the city writes.

“So they are watching the account,” Conner said.