ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Rochester police are searching for a man in a dark hoodie with clear white markings who attempted to deposit a stolen and forged check at an ESL ATM. On Wednesday, they arrested the driver of the car, a 21-year-old woman.
The case illustrates a much bigger problem that took us to a Rochester law firm.
Derrick Spatorico of Pheterson & Spatorico Law Group showed News10NBC Chief Investigative Reporter Berkeley Brean the original $4,000 check his law firm cut in the fall, meant to pay taxes in Perinton. The altered check that people tried to deposit twice had “tax receiver” changed to the name “Dimesha Brown,” but Spatorico’s signature and the check number remained the same.
Berkeley Brean, News10NBC: “How do you think this check got into their hands?”Derrick Spatorico, Pheterson & Spatorico Law Group: “Well I’m pretty confident, not 100%, but all the facts are pointing to the fact we deposited the checks into a receptacle, outside the building, of the postal service.”
“We had checks going to a number of different towns and they all disappeared at the same time frame,” Spatorico said.
According to the police complaint filed in Rochester City Court, the individuals first attempted to deposit the check through an app called Truist Bank, which flagged it. They then tried to deposit it at an ESL ATM on Lake Avenue, where ESL’s fraud department also caught it. Cameras at the drive-thru ATM captured the driver’s face, leading to the arrest and grand larceny charge of Emani Gillespie.
Capt. Greg Bello, RPD: “In this case we’re not alleging that she’s the one that stole the check. Obviously we’re still looking into that.”
Police are still searching for the man from the back seat who put the check in, his face covered but wearing a hoodie with “444” in large white letters.
Berkeley Brean: “The law firm says they physically put that check in the mailbox. So how do you think these people got it?”Capt. Greg Bello: “You look at online, dark web, online marketplaces, those checks are for sale and even at the street level.”
News10NBC Investigator Brett Davidsen found hundreds of stolen checks for sale, some of them local, on the Telegram app. office reports that people mug letter carriers, steal their keys, open the blue boxes, take the mail and look for checks. This has happened five times in Rochester this year.
In a statement for Davidsen’s story, a spokesperson for Telegram said “the sale of stolen checks and other forms of fraud are explicitly forbidden.” The spokesperson went on to say their moderators remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day, including fraud.
Berkeley Brean: “Who is the injured party in this alleged crime?”Derrick Spatorico: “Well I think it’s every business that deals with checks.”
Spatorico says his firm writes thousands of checks every day and is now spending money on extra staff and security. “It’s a monumental amount of work for a small business like ours,” he said.
Spatorico notes that sending checks is the standard practice, as doing it electronically comes with extra fees. If the banks hadn’t flagged the check, it would have been days or weeks before his office noticed, leaving a gap of time for the money to be gone.
office union is asking Congress to pass a law making the assault of a letter carrier a much more serious crime.
News10NBC Investigates: Law firm’s $4,000 check stolen from mailbox, altered, and nearly deposited twice by suspects in Rochester WHEC.com.
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