Checks

Keiffer Mitchell, trying to give the boot to the mayor who once famously brandished a shoe, has resorted to footwear theatrics of his own. At a meeting with his campaign staff two weeks ago, Mitchell tossed his black dress shoes in the trash and - even more startling - unveiled his new look: dark business suit with work boots. "These are what I'm going to be wearing now because we have some work to do and we have a lot of you-know-what to go through," Mitchell recalls telling his staff.

A former employee of a Columbia-based food distributor and a Reisterstown man pleaded guilty yesterday in Howard Circuit Court to conspiring to embezzle more than $260,000 from the company last fall.Former U.S. Foodservice employee Patrick J. Belzner, 30, and an accomplice, Christopher T. St. Ange, 49, each faced 10 charges of theft stemming from a scheme unhinged by an alert bank employee."It's a lot of money," said Assistant State's Attorney Bernard L. Taylor. "It's a big case [in terms of]

State Sen. Martin G. Madden's mystery money moved from a German businessman's Texas account to his Maryland campaign fund because of a single digit wrongly entered by a bank employee, a NationsBank spokeswoman said yesterday.The Howard and Prince George's legislator had been puzzled all summer about his campaign receiving three large checks from a man in Texas he had never heard of -- in a nonelection year. He tried to return the checks and was doubly confused when they came back to him."We goofed," said Betsy Hall, NationsBank's spokeswoman in Texas.

It starts, simply enough, with stolen checkbooks. It ends, commonly enough, with cocaine on Baltimore streets. Along the way, federal prosecutors say, two men accused of drug dealing may have swindled a bank out of nearly $200,000.Amos Clarke, 21, and Daiwor Togbah Woah-Tee, 26, are in jail awaiting a Friday arraignment in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, each charged with a single count of distributing cocaine.Court documents detail a scheme by which the suspects allegedly raised front money for drugs by stealing checks and recruiting addicts to cash them at First Union Bank branches in Maryland and Washington.

IS THAT A "live" check sitting in your mailbox, missing only your signature to turn it into instant $5,000 to $10,000 cash? Or is it a look-alike check with a much bigger payout number -- from $30,000 up -- that's not a check at all, but instead a come-on for a high interest-rate loan secured by your home?If you've been confused recently by one or more such "checks" peeking through the cellophane windows of envelopes that resemble those used by federal agencies, join the crowd. "Live" checks and look-alike dummy checks are two of the fastest-growing techniques for marketing debt to homeowners, and they're upsetting not only consumers, but some members of Congress as well.

A former IRS computer specialist was charged yesterday with steering tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts to companies that were bribing him, federal prosecutors in Baltimore said.Scott Allen King of Marbury in Charles County accepted numerous checks -- for between $2,000 and $9,000 -- and failed to report the proceeds on his income tax, an indictment alleges. He is charged with receiving bribes and filing false returns.King accepted the bribes between 1990 and 1995 while working for the IRS as a contracting officer in Bailey's Crossroads, Va., prosecutors said.

Several Maryland lawmakers have returned campaign contributions sent by lobbyists last week as the General Assembly convened. Accepting the money would have violated a legislative rule prohibiting fund raising during the Assembly's 90-day session.Gary R. Alexander, a former Democratic delegate from Prince George's County who lobbies for a variety of clients, confirmed yesterday that he sent contributions to several legislators Jan. 6, two days before the session began.Alexander said some were mailed and others delivered by an aide, with the intention of having them arrive before the legislature opened Jan. 8.But some lawmakers said they were surprised and upset to find the checks waiting in their Annapolis offices when they returned for the session.

A Frederick woman who swindled money from an elderly woman under her care pleaded guilty yesterday in Carroll County Circuit Court to one count of theft.Nancy Walter, 21, will be sentenced May 29 by Judge Francis M. Arnold.Prosecutors said Walter wrote inflated checks to herself from the woman's bank account. She falsely recorded the amounts of checks written on April 10 and April 24 last year. Walter wrote $98 in the ledger of the woman's checkbook, but cashed a check dated April 10 for $198 and one dated April 24 for $298, prosecutors said.

Don't mind the burden of collecting taxesGeorge Nilson's April 14 rejoiner, "Making workers work harder can be good," misses the main point in the controversy over whether taxpayers should be required to write two checks when they pay state and local income taxes in Maryland.While it is true that handling 1.3 million additional checks would be an administrative burden for our office and the state treasurer's office, the main arguments against the requirement are the cost to the taxpayer, the real cost to the state and the fact that the message of separate state and local income taxes would be lost on 75 percent of taxpayers (those who are due refunds and do not write checks for paying taxes)

WASHINGTON -- At least $200,000 in contributions to President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign came from donors that federal investigators now suspect were fictitious, including checks from several phony corporations and a $3,000 draft funneled through the account of a dead woman.The most compelling evidence of this illegal practice comes from two strikingly similar checks that arrived at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee last August, on the day after Clinton's 50th birthday fund-raiser was held at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.

Eschol Amelia Studnitz lost her $58,000 accounting job July 31 because a government background check deemed her "unsuitable" for a low-level security clearance. She was stunned. She had no criminal record. "I kept thinking, 'What could I have done?' " said the 59-year-old Carroll County resident, who goes by the name Amy. Her shock was warranted: Her firing was based on a mistake. And within days, her employer, Corporate Mailing Services of Arbutus, heard from the Social Security Administration that she could, in fact, work on a new contract handling mail for the agency.

The recent merger of two Baltimore financial institutions, Brown Advisory and Brown Investment Management, brought up memories of a period 40 years ago when I enjoyed a brief career with the old Alex. Brown & Sons. A letter appeared on a Loyola High School bulletin board in January 1968 about a part-time job available at this conservative investment banking house. I was a 17-year-old senior and ready for a little change. I appeared at the side door of Calvert and Baltimore streets one afternoon to apply for the $1.45-an-hour clerk's job. A day or two later, I was working a couple of hours a day after school for Stanley Kraska and his staff.

LOS ANGELES -- I've never set foot in a PetSmart and haven't owned a critter since my family's beloved boxer, Archie, slobbered off this mortal coil sometime during the Nixon years. So that $38.28 payment to the pet store jumped off the screen as I did my online banking a few Saturdays ago. There, on the signature line of Check No. 3512's electronic image, was a big, flowery, cursive rendition of "Kim Christensen." My name, but not my signature. Not only had my mark been forged, but judging from its feminine flourish, it was by someone who assumed, like untold others before, that Kim must be a girl.

Keiffer Mitchell, trying to give the boot to the mayor who once famously brandished a shoe, has resorted to footwear theatrics of his own. At a meeting with his campaign staff two weeks ago, Mitchell tossed his black dress shoes in the trash and - even more startling - unveiled his new look: dark business suit with work boots. "These are what I'm going to be wearing now because we have some work to do and we have a lot of you-know-what to go through," Mitchell recalls telling his staff.

The Federal Reserve Bank will eliminate 120 check-processing jobs in Baltimore by the end of 2009 as part of a consolidation of 22 regional processing facilities into four. "There's less paper to process," said David Fettig, spokesman for the Fed's Financial Services Policy Committee. Increasingly, payments are made with credit and debit cards or online transfers rather than paper checks. And those paper checks are increasingly processed as electronic images, rather than physically shipped around the country.

A former insurance claims adjustor pleaded guilty in Baltimore Circuit Court yesterday to stealing fraudulent workers' compensation checks in a scheme involving a former city police officer, according to the Maryland attorney general's office. Prosecutors said Natalie L. Mack, 40, an employee for CompManagement Inc., issued more than $153,000 in fraudulent disability and medical payment checks to former Baltimore police Officer Andre Stover. Stover had pleaded guilty to his role in the felony theft in January.

Insurance adjuster admits theft A former Anne Arundel County insurance claims adjuster admitted in federal court in Baltimore yesterday that he stole more than $100,000 from his employer. Terrance A. Tasker, 36, of Shady Side pleaded guilty to transporting stolen money from Nationwide Insurance across state lines. According to his plea agreement, Tasker made up people with claims that he was investigating. At Tasker's direction, Nationwide then sent 47 payment checks for those fictitious people -- totaling $118,637.

The Department of Homeland Security will begin checking the names of about 400,000 longshoremen and other employees of port facilities against federal terrorist watch lists, the agency announced yesterday, six weeks after an Arab company's thwarted efforts to do work at some U.S. ports heightened concern about who should be allowed on American docks. Homeland Security has been under increased pressure to check those handling millions of tons of goods that pass through the ports to U.S. store shelves since Dubai Ports World dropped plans to take over some operations at about two dozen ports last month.

An Ohio man pleaded guilty yesterday to engineering a half-million dollar scam of local governments, including Baltimore, by impersonating a representative of city-approved vendors and persuading officials to send him replacement checks for ones issued to the companies. James Leroy Shorts, 34, of Shaker Heights, Ohio, was arrested in March and charged with 10 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering related to allegations in Maryland. Prosecutors said the scheme cost Maryland $160,000.

RIINGG. The office phone sprang to life. At first the woman's voice was pained and frantic. Then she got angry. And she wasn't shy about who knew. You have to help me. It's unbelievable. I'm gonna scream. Writing newspaper editorials, it's a job where you hear a lot of things. Not so nice things. Women in distress, that's par for the course. But this one was different. She'd been getting letters, threatening ones. And she'd been forking over money. Quarterly. Been doing it for years.