Following up on a Briscoe Road man’s complaint in November that checks he’d written had been stolen from his outgoing mail, New Canaan Police pieced together a complicated fraud scheme that targeted multiple residents.
Thanks largely to the legwork of NCPD Detective Sgt. Peter Condos, police arrested two Bridgeport men on felony charges and are expecting to charge a third person, according to a police report.
The scam worked this way, officials said: One man would steal stamped, outgoing envelopes meant for a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier from a residence, rifle through the contents and hand off any checks to two different people. The checks would be fraudulently “signed over” to those two individuals and deposited in their Bank of America accounts in Bridgeport.
The Briscoe man, 37, was the first to notify police that checks he’d written did not reach their destinations, yet somehow they were cashed, according to a police report.
The checks had been written in late October and were reported stolen Nov. 11, the report said.
Police used video surveillance at a bank to identify the man who deposited the checks in the two others’ accounts, and came to learn that those individuals were “in” on the scam—getting a cut of the haul in exchange for use of their accounts, the report said.
The total amount stolen in the forged checks in November was $1,273, according to police.
One Bridgeport man was charged with six counts of liability for acts of another, three counts of fourth-degree larceny and three counts of second-degree forgery. He was released on $1,000 bond and scheduled to appear June 8 in state Superior Court in Norwalk.
The second man—who had been arrested separately by Bridgeport Police and subsequently picked up by New Canaan authorities—was charged with three counts of fourth-degree larceny and eight counts of second-degree forgery. He was released on $20,000 bond and scheduled to appear June 18 in state Superior Court in Norwalk.
An arrest warrant has been obtained for a third individual, police said.
Police later discovered that checks had been stolen as part of the same fraud scam from envelopes in outgoing mail from residences on Lukes Wood Road and Smith Ridge Road, officials said.