Local check scam uncovered

Three Blair County individuals will be charged sometime this week with forgery, theft by deception, criminal conspiracy, and receiving stolen property for cashing bogus payroll checks, the State College Police Department said.

The identities of the individuals will not be released until they are formally charged, and charges cannot be filed until all the checks have been returned from the banks, State College police said. However, two of the accused are women and one is a man who was picked up on probation violations, said Detective Saupp, of the Patton Township Police Department.

"Some of the company names used were 'Nittany Professional Cleaning, Inc.' and 'Witmer Construction Company, Inc.'," Saupp said.

They also used a computer to produce fake Pennsylvania driver's licenses which they used as identification, Saupp said.

When the checks were found to be phony, police reviewed footage from a surveillance camera to identify those involved.

"The camera was used to track down one of the individuals and that person agreed to cooperate," Saupp said.

It is not known exactly how much the individuals received for the checks since the scam began several months ago. State College police said that one of the individuals began cashing checks in September, but they are unsure when the other two accomplices became involved.

In State College alone, police estimate checks were cashed for about $2,500.

"They said they wrote a lot of checks and that most of the checks were written for about $400 to $600 each," Saupp said. "They had a pretty good business going for a while."