Two Philadelphia men were arrested by Caernarvon Township police after Ephrata National Bank in Morgantown reported an attempt to cash a counterfeit check, investigators said<\/p>\n
Robert R. Jones, 45, and Jonathan T. Bradley, 39, were taken into custody as they left the bank at 6296 Morgantown Road about 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, police said.<\/p>\n
They were committed to Berks County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail and $75,000 bail, respectively, following arraignment before District Judge Kim L. Bagenstose in Reading Central Court.<\/p>\n
The defendants are charged with criminal conspiracy in addition to access device fraud, theft by unlawful taking and theft by deception.<\/p>\n
According to the court records:<\/p>\n
Police were dispatched after the branch manager reported Bradley presented a check from Martin\u2019s Ag Service, Lancaster County, that appeared to be made out to him for $1,643. The teller contacted a representative from Martin\u2019s who confirmed the check was forged and not authorized to be drawn by Bradley.<\/p>\n
While the teller stalled for police to arrive, Bradley kept approaching her, saying he needed to go while requesting she return his identification card.<\/p>\n
Bradley was heard saying \u201cwe gotta go\u201d to the male who was with him, later identified as Jones.<\/p>\n
Officers arrived as the men were leaving the bank and took them into custody.<\/p>\n
Another counterfeit check \u2014 this one made out for $1,577 to Jones \u2014 was found in Jones\u2019 possession.<\/p>\n
The bank confirmed both checks were altered after they were issued to others.<\/p>\n
At least one of the checks was placed in the company\u2019s outgoing mail by the curb.<\/p>\n
Both suspects claimed a check was presented to them by Martin\u2019s for landscaping work they did for the company. When police asked where the co-workers were, they said they had left but were to return.<\/p>\n
Detective Sgt. Chad Eberly wrote in the arrest affidavits that the forged checks were likely fished from a stand-alone outgoing mailbox, such as those commonly found in front of a business park.<\/p>\n
Ringleaders of such schemes view their accomplices as expendable and leave them behind at the financial institution if they see police arriving. Typically, he said, they\u2019ll promise an accomplice a percentage of the money for each fraudulent check that is cashed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Philadelphia men were arrested by Caernarvon Township police after Ephrata National Bank in Morgantown reported an attempt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[349,3802,202,182,139,28,69,71,70,706],"class_list":["post-161674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-berks-county","tag-caernarvon-township","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}