In the spirit of the holidays, I made a very kind humanitarian gesture tonight. I gave a man I'd never met before free room and board for an indefinite period of time.
As most of you guys (and girls) know, I am Manager of a grocery store. We offer check cashing as a service to our customers. I also handle the hot checks we have to deal with (and they anger me to no end) so I am always on the look out for anything odd or funky about a check we cash.
Tonight, right before we closed customer service, a young guy came in and wanted to cash his payroll check. He hands me the check and his ID and immediately I knew something was wrong. He did not have his regular drivers license, only a paper reciept from his renewal. This alone is not unusual, we see them off and on when someone has lost their ID or had their license suspended but the appearance of this reciept was odd. It was blurry, the fonts did not match and the type was not aligned across the entire document and there was some sort of plastic laminate over it. No question about it, fake ID.
Now I look at the check, it is worn and wrinkled like he had been carrying it in his pocket for a week. I had never heard of the drilling company before and I know most local employers from seeing their checks come thru the store. I look at the bank it's drawn on, same bank I use, but the routing number is wrong. The paycheck is for $463.00, even. The company is in Weatherford, about 50 miles away, but the bank is local.
Luckily the phone starts ringing. I tell the guy "Just a sec, I'll be right back." I walk behind the partition where the phone is, out of sight of the man, pick up the ringing line, put it on hold and call the police on the other line.
I tell the dispatcher what is going on and to get me an officer over here asap. I walk back to the window and start playing "country dumb". I ask him where they are working at and he says out by the lake. "Oh, really? I got a nephew that lives out that way. He's telling me there's oil rigs popping up left and right. Your rig been out there long?" Guy replies "Uh, no. We just moved it in."
"Well that's cool. At least ya got to wait till after Christmas to make the move. Where ya from?" I ask. "Weatherford" he replies.
"Oh, what's your address, I forgot I'm suppossed to write it on there."
"803 West Sycamore"
The check and ID say 603 West Sycamore. But, I write what he tells me on the check. Now he starts relaxing a bit because it looks like I'm about to cash it for him.
"So ya seen any deer out there on the lake? Ya know The last time I went out there..." and I go off into a hunting story knowing I can stretch this into a few minutes easy without the guy getting suspicious.
A couple minutes pass and the phone rings again, it's the dispatcher asking if the guy is still there. I tell her yes, and give her a description of what he's wearing. She says the officers are in the store and for me to go to them. I walk back over, pick up the check and ID and tell the guy "I got to get my Manager to OK this, I'll be right back."
I walk out of the booth and see 2 officers to either side of me. I walk over to the closest one and the other 3 move in.
Book 'em, Dano!:rofl
They search him and find 2 more checks for the exact same amount. The odd thing was when they ran the ID it came back to the name on the checks and ID. The guy had some sort of identity theft thing going on as well.
The last time I saw him he was being handcuffed and put into the back of a patrol car. He gave me a go to hell look, I smiled and waved back to him. "Ya'll come back now, ya hear?"
