An Arkansas woman has been arrested and charged with cashing in forged payroll checks back in 2020, according to a Sentinel-Record report.
Lakendra Jana Mitchell was taken into custody Friday and booked on three counts of second-degree forgery. Each offense is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The 23-year-old, who holds no prior criminal history, appeared in court Wednesday where she pleaded not guilty to all charges. She was initially held on a $10,000 bond but it was reduced to $3,000. She is scheduled to appear back in court in April.
According to court documents, Harps Food Store, Top of the Mountain Shell and Royal Shell all filed reports stating that Mitchell cashed three forged checks totaling over $1,500 over a three-day period right before Covid-19 hit during the beginning of 2020.
“In each of the cases, the checks appeared to be a legitimate payroll check” and “all the checks were later returned to the businesses as being fictitious,” according to the report. “In each case, the store managers provided video surveillance photos of the transactions that clearly showed the individual involved and all the checks were allegedly written to Mitchell.”
Garland County Sheriff’s Investigator Jimmy Nobles said his staff was able to obtain a printout of Mitchell’s driver’s license information, which included her photo. He then used the photo to compare the woman who appeared in video surveillance. Authorities confirmed that the woman in each of the videos was Mitchell. She has since been banned from frequenting any of the stores where the forgeries took place.
The FBI estimates that losses from check fraud total $18.7 billion each year.
“More than 500 million checks, more than a million a day, are forged annually in the U.S.” Furthermore, “because of demands on law enforcement, prosecutors fail to pursue 75 percent of bank check fraud cases, leaving most matters to be settled between the involved parties, and placing even greater emphasis on the concept of due diligence,” according to figures compiled by Relyco.
