WAUKESHA — Eight Atlanta men were charged Friday in connection to a mail theft and check fraud scheme that had victims in Racine County, including several businesses.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court, the scheme involved the men taking mail out of mailboxes, printing checks with the addresses gleaned from the stolen mail, then hiring a person off the street to try to cash the checks.
The arrest of the men took place Tuesday after alert Elm Grove police noticed a minivan with tinted windows and Colorado license plates moving suspiciously a little after noon in the village’s downtown area. Also aware of reports of a check fraud ring acting in the area, the officers notified a BMO Harris bank in the downtown area to call them if they suspected fraud.
Meanwhile, the van, whose occupants apparently noticed the unmarked squad car, sped off. Police caught up with the van in the parking lot of the Brookfield Square shopping center in the adjacent City of Brookfield. Upon approaching the van, Elm Grove police said they immediately detected an odor of marijuana, according to the complaint.
People are also reading…
The complaint states that it was as police searched the vehicle that the stolen mail was discovered in a bag in the rear of the vehicle. The mail did not have postal cancellations, police said, and had addresses belonging to Great Lakes Bio Systems, Great Lakes Bushings, Nicolet Natural Southeast Wisconsin and Racine Metal Fab, all businesses located near Interstate 94 in Yorkville.
As the investigation continued, police received a call about a fraud taking place at the BMO Harris branch in Elm Grove. There, police confronted a Milwaukee man who told police that he had been picked up earlier in the day on Layton Avenue in Milwaukee and offered a job. According to the complaint, the man was told by the Atlanta suspects that their relatives owned a company that hired illegal immigrants, and the company could not issue paychecks to those immigrants, so the suspects asked the Milwaukee man to cash checks made out to him on the immigrants’ behalf.
Police later learned that the printing of the fraudulent checks took place in a room the suspects had checked into at a motel near General Mitchell International Airport.
According to the complaint, police also found mail stolen from a Mount Pleasant woman and from a woman residing in Oak Creek.
The suspects are facing charges of felony identity theft and receiving stolen property.
