It certainly looked like a real check from the Erie County Clerk’s Office. The signature, the memo line, the account number and the dollar amount appeared the same as the original.
In fact, the counterfeit check looked so good that $326,456 in taxpayer money that was supposed to go to New York State was stolen, and law enforcement officials told The Buffalo News that the money is unlikely to be recovered.
During an audit last year, the Erie County Comptroller’s Office discovered the theft. It determined that a check issued by the Clerk’s Office to a state agency in March 2022 was intercepted, and a counterfeit check was made out to “Get Mobile LLC” using the same account details. The only thing that was notably different on the fake check was the name and address of the recipient.
In a prior audit last summer, the Comptroller’s Office uncovered fraud that it said was perpetrated by a county employee.
But this stolen check appears to be an outside job, investigators said. No one knows how or when the original check was intercepted.
“We don’t know who the culprit is, but someone got hundreds of thousands of dollars from Erie County under false pretenses,” Comptroller Kevin Hardwick said. “And when we found out about that, we turned it over to the DA’s Office.”
District Attorney John Flynn said the investigation into the counterfeit check is ongoing and that information was shared with the U.S. Secret Service.
Erie County sends monthly mortgage tax checks to the state worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. For every commercial property sold, the State of New York Mortgage Agency receives a cut of the mortgage taxes paid on the transaction to support low-interest loan programs for first-time homebuyers.
In 2022, all of Erie County’s monthly mortgage tax checks were received by SONYMA – except for in March. The March check was copied and an authentic-looking forgery listed the check recipient as Get Mobile…
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