By Kelly Young

kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com

Detective Tonya Sonntag of the Jacksonville Police Department is investigating what she believes to be a counterfeit check-cashing ring that struck numerous businesses in Jacksonville two weeks ago.

The ring, believed by Sonntag to be a group of 10 or so Hispanic males, passed a total of 122 checks at three check-cashing locations in town; stealing about $27,000 in the process.

According to witnesses, the men used three vehicles — a gray Ford van, a green Ford SUV and a white passenger car — sending two or three people into the building at one time to cash checks, and cycling more in as one of their counterparts exited. The counterfeiters used checks which appeared to be payroll checks from two local companies.

“The checks we have been seeing are pretty good-quality fakes. Usually they will misspell a word or a lot of times they will poke holes in the routing numbers, but these look pretty good,” Sonntag said. “Holding one of the fakes up to a real payroll check will show that the real one is a little bit darker, but that’s the only real difference.”

Sonntag said the sophistication of the operation indicates this is probably not the group’s first time running this scam. She said a similar ring hit the town of Horton recently, and no arrests were made. Sonntag believes it is likely the Horton culprits are the same people who are responsible for the Jacksonville crimes.

“Most of the time when you have an organized group like this, they take the time to do some research on the businesses in town in order to pick out a good target,” she said. “While casing a company they will pay attention to what types of people work at the business; as a group of Hispanic males, they will choose to target a business that employs a lot of Hispanic males. If they were a group of white females they would use fake checks from a business where a lot of white females work.”

In Jacksonville, one of the chosen businesses was a plant farm and the other was a local manufacturer. Sonntag said they were probably chosen at random, likely through no fault of the companies’.

Fingerprints found on eight of the checks have been sent to the Lufkin Police Department where they will be entered into the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System to see if a match can be found.

“I should hear back from Lufkin PD in the next week or so, but to be honest with you, I’ll be shocked if it comes up with somebody. Usually in a situation like this, they are going to only use people that have no prior criminal record,” Sonntag said. “I’m currently checking with some of the motels around here to see if they had anyone staying with them around that time, with a vehicle matching the descriptions we have.”

Sonntag said she has notified all area law enforcement agencies about the men and sent an e-mail to all of the businesses in town asking that they be on-the-lookout for this scam.

She thinks banks and other check-cashing locations are going to need to make a concerted effort if they hope to avoid such losses.

“It’s to the point where banks, unless they are dealing with a customer that they absolutely know, will need to make people come inside and provide a driver’s license in order to cash checks. And the tellers are going to need to take steps to verify whether the check and the driver’s license are real,” she said. “The businesses don’t want to offend their customers, so more often than not they will cash a check they aren’t sure about. People are just going to have to understand that even though it may be an inconvenience to provide identification, by doing so the bank is trying to help them in the long run.”

Anyone with information regarding the counterfeiters can contact the Jacksonville Police Department at 903-586-2546.

“I think it is likely they have moved on at this point, but you can never be 100 percent sure. We are doing what we can to follow up any leads we get, and even if we aren’t able to get them now, if they keep doing this there’s a good chance they will get caught down the road. We will be filing forgery and possibly identity theft charges when that happens,” Sonntag said.