Winter Garden police arrested a man they said was cashing checks for someone who has been dead for nearly five years.
Channel 9’s Jeff Deal learned the suspect was cashing the checks at a business that was at the center of multimillion-dollar check-cashing fraud investigation.
Winter Garden police said Johnny Calvert cashed the Social Security checks at DJs Discount Market for more than four years.
http://liarcatchers.com/identity_theft_investigation.html
Lt. Scott Allen, of the Winter Garden Police Department, said Johnny Calvert was cashing checks made out to his nephew, Donnie Calvert, who died in 2010.Identity Theft Man Arrested For Cashing Dead Nephew’s Social Secuirty Checks
http://liarcatchers.com/identity_theft_investigation.html
“It’s just crazy someone would take advantage of the system like that,” said Allen. “Several of the checks were cashed, totaling over $37,000 in funds.”
Police said Johnny Calvert told them he kept getting the checks and cashing them because his nephew owed him money.
“He’s a good person,” said Johnny Calvert’s sister, Barbara John. “If you walked up to him and said, ‘Can I borrow a dollar,’ he’d hand it to you.”
Last year, the owners of DJs pleaded guilty in federal court to a scheme where investigators said they bought more than $24 million in fraudulent IRS checks for 50 cents on the dollar, then deposited the checks into their own accounts.
Some of those fraudulent checks were also from deceased people, authorities said.
In Johnny Calvert’s case, police said the store owners may not have known Donnie Calvert died.
“Everyone talks about how Social Security is going to be an issue in the future, so when you have somebody defrauding the department itself, it’s not helping out,” said Allen.
Of the 47 checks cashed, police said they’ve connected Johnny Calvert to 21 of them. They are still investigating to see if other people may have been involved.
DJs Discount Market has since changed names and is under new ownership.
