Yk man guilty of trying to cash fake cheque
One of three caught in scam in the last year
Mark Rendell
Northern News Services
Published Friday, July 25, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Another Yellowknife man has been found guilty of depositing or trying to deposit fake cheques in return for cash from strangers.
Last October, Joshua Clarke attempted to cash the fake payroll cheque from Shell Energy Canada for roughly $3,850 at Money Mart on Borden Drive.
In Clarke's testimony, summarized by Judge Christine Gagnon, he claimed to have received the cheque from two men who offered to pay him $300 to deposit it on their behalf.
Clarke claimed that one of the men had pulled up in a cab when he was hanging out on the street and explained that he was unable to cash a cheque because he was from Seattle.
The stranger took Clarke to a nearby restaurant where he and another man convinced him to have his name written on the cheque and to try cashing it, first at CIBC then at Money Mart.
Clarke was a regular customer at Money Mart, testified Michelle Blandizzi, the manager of Money Mart at the time. However, she became suspicious, she said, after asking Clarke a number of routine questions about the cheque.
"It was a high amount for a payroll cheque, especially for someone who hadn't been cashing payroll cheques," she said. As far as she could remember, she said, Clarke had only cashed income assistance cheques in the past.
When she inquired about his new employment with Shell Energy he answered in vague terms, she said. And she noticed the the ink on the cheque seemed to smudge when she ran her finger across it.
Clarke became agitated, said Blandizzi, and left Money Mart without the cheques.
Blandizzi called the RCMP who seized the cheques and arrested Clarke on Feb. 19 following an investigation.
Kim Spence, banking manager at Shell Energy Canada, testified in court via video link that Shell, as far as she could tell, had not cut the cheque.
"It's a reasonable facsimile of a check from several years ago," she said. "But, since 2010, our cheques have been blue."
The former Shell treasurer whose signature was on the cheque has not worked for the company since 2007, she said. And the cheque listed Bank of Montreal with whom Shell cut banking ties in 2010, she added.
In her decision, Gagnon ruled that Clarke must have known the cheque was fake, even if he was, in some sense, taken advantage of by the strangers who offered to pay him.
He is one of three people from Yellowknife caught up in the scam. Defence lawyer Jay Bran said all three cases seem to be related as the description of the two strangers was the same in each case.
The other two Yellowknife men, both homeless, successfully cashed cheques and were forced to pay back $6,800 and $7,277 respectively.
Clarkes' sentencing has been put off until October until a pre-sentence report explaining his background and life situation can be prepared.
