Man attempts to buy truck with forged check 4th time in a year

In a crappy economy, it’s the norm to see people taking really dumb criminal risks in an attempt to make money. But none pack quite the punch of stupid of one Alaska man who tried to buy a pickup truck with a forged check for the fourth time in one year.

A Fairbanks man is accused of trying to purchase a $28,000 pickup truck with a forged check for the fourth time this year.

Jonathon Michael Smith, 22, was arraigned Tuesday on new felony charges of attempted first-degree theft and second-degree forgery.

Fairbanks police Officer Jim O’Malley responded to the dealership soon after the manager became aware that something was amiss. O’Malley was aware of Smith’s history and asked him what he was doing.

Smith said that he was “being stupid,” according to a criminal complaint filed in court.

That’s one of the things I love about smaller towns that we don’t really get to experience in a big city. Could you imagine getting arrested for something like this and then the cops just come, knowing you do this all the time, and go, “What are you doin’ this time, Jonathon?” and you can just go, “Aw shucks” and go right back to jail? It’d be so quaint if it didn’t involve a massive fraud attempt.

For as dumb as the guy seems to be, his scheme wasn’t half bad though.

Smith allegedly used forged checks to purchase two trucks worth $70,000 from Kendall Honda in January. About the same time, he also tried to purchase a $25,000 truck from Gene’s Chrysler, but employees became suspicious of the checks Smith wrote and refused to deliver the vehicle.

To create the checks, Smith allegedly altered a USAA check another man posted on his blog after removing the account and routing numbers. He would print the altered check from e-mails and try to pass them as real to the employees of local car dealerships, court documents allege.

I’m all for attempting to keep up the guise of being a criminal mastermind who’s passing around fake checks, but when you’re getting arrested multiple times for the same crime, you’re not really accomplishing much. You’re going to go to jail for a substantial time so why not just steal the car with some brute force at this point? Or at least a comically oversized Publishers Clearing House check. Robbery needs more prop gags.

Fairbanks man arrested again after trying to buy 4th truck with forged check [Newsminer]

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