Police last week arrested a 41-year-old Walker, La.-man by warrant in connection with the theft nearly three years ago of more than $40,000 from a New Canaan resident’s checking account.
Authorities in New Canaan learned of the possible larceny in May 2023 from a sergeant in the Walker Police Department in Louisiana, according to an arrest warrant application obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request. That sergeant had come across a forged check belonging to a New Canaan couple’s joint Bank of America account while investigating his own fraud case, according to the application filed by Police Officer Owen Ochs and signed by a state Superior Court judge.
In speaking to the victims, New Canaan Police learned that the incident had happened in late December 2022. At that time, the BoA Fraud Department—suspicious of a signature that looked “off”—contacted the local man saying that “an individual was attempting to cash a check for $42,200,” the arrest warrant application said. The man told BoA that neither he nor his wife wrote out a check for that amount, “and the check number was approximately 60 check numbers higher than where he actually was in his check register,” the warrant said. Though BoA was told not to process the check, “somehow the offender was still able to successfully cash the check,” it said. The New Canaan told police “he believes the check was stolen from his mailbox in October 2022, as a check he placed in the mailbox to be sent to his housekeeping service in Greenwich never arrived,” the application said.
Police determined that the offender had forged a signature on a check dated Dec. 23, 2022 and cashed by a Chase Bank account holder in Baton Rouge, La. Police found the suspect’s name on the driver’s license he used to open the account, and found that it had been deposited Dec. 30, 2022 through an ATM in Gonzales, La.
“No surveillance footage is available due to Chase Bank only maintaining surveillance footage for 90 days after the transaction,” the police affidavit said.
The police sergeant in Louisiana had interviewed the suspect in his own fraud case and, during that interview, the man “stated he was aware of the $42,200” check being deposited into his account, but stated a friend who had owed him money and just sold his truck deposited the check and not him,” the arrest warrant application said.
New Canaan Police charged him with first-degree larceny, first-degree identity theft and third-degree forgery. He turned himself in to police at 9:20 a.m. on Nov. 16. Police released the man on $250,000 bond and scheduled him to appear Dec. 8 in state Superior Court.