A traffic stop on Highway 75 led to two arrests for check forgery, and deputies credit a specially trained German shepherd for helping make the bust.
The Grayson County Sheriff’s Office had gone without a drug-sniffing dog for several years, but now on patrol, deputies say the four-legged crime-fighter is sniffing out marijuana and in this case, that is not all that was found.
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Four months into the job, Grayson County’s new drug dog “Thor” stumbled into a suspected scam. “The checks are real, but the companies on the checks do not exist,” says Sheriff’s Office Lt. Rickey Wheeler.
Deputies say it happened when Investigator Mark Haning pulled over a car on Highway 75 on Tuesday. They say the two women inside the car had conflicting stories about their trip.
“Haning could smell a burnt marijuana smell coming from within the car and just to be sure, he got his canine partner Thor out, went around the car, and Thor alerted to the car,” says Wheeler.
Even though deputies say the women did not want Haning to look inside under the law, the dog’s alert gave him probable cause to search the car and he found a small amount of marijuana.
Investigators say Thor has helped them sniff out drugs several times — that’s just what he’s trained to do — but in this case, they also discovered something else suspicious inside the car.
“The big find was 36 checks that had already been written up, they’re medical checks for people to claim, they had the IDs in the car for the checks and it totaled to about $25,000,” says Wheeler.
Deputies say Serita Gainus, 42, of Palestine, and Arsheniqua Aadil, 25, of Dallas, admitted they were headed to Oklahoma to cash the checks.
Investigators say they were made out to the women for several hundred dollars each as coming from a bogus “medical company.”
“One of the IDs was actually from Tennessee that they were trying to use and we’ve contacted agencies all the way from Oklahoma to Tennessee,” says Wheeler.
Sherman has also had two drug dogs used for searches and getting at uncooperative subjects. In this case, the women allegedly had five different IDs between them. Bond for each was set at $75,000.
