Crime & Safety
No Really, The Check Is Good
Chicago man first says the check was his payment for work in Milwaukee, then changes his story to claim a man dropped him off to cash.
A 50-year-old Chicago man is facing charges after he allegedly passed a bad check at a Caledonia bank Wednesday.
Tony Earl Hines was charged in Racine County Circuit Court Thursday with one count of uttering a forgery. If convicted, he faces up to six years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
According to the criminal complaint:
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On Wednesday, Caledonia police were called to Johnson Bank after Hines came in with a check written from a bank account owned by United Hospital Systems Inc., which was determined to be fraudulent. A similar check had been cashed at the bank on Tuesday and similar checks had also been passed at banks in Franklin and Brookfield.
Hines told officers the check was good and he got it for cleaning hotels in Milwaukee, but couldn’t say where one of the hotels was even though he claimed to be staying there since Monday. When confronted with the fact he would have been paid $65 an hour to perform the amount of work her claimed to do to correspond with the value of the check, Hines then changed his story to say a man had dropped him off to cash the check in exchange for $500.
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He then changed his story again and insisted it was a payroll check from a job his brother-in-law helped him get. Police then called his brother in law who first said they had been working for a roofing company, then claimed it was hotel cleaning and lied about it being a roofing company.
Hines will make his initial appearance in court Friday.
