A Carson City woman faces a felony charge of obtaining money by false pretenses after she allegedly took a check from a mailbox, blotted out the information, signed her own name, depositing it through an ATM machine and then cashing it out later.
Stephanie Louise Rincon, 36, was arrested Monday for the charge. Bail has been set at $20,000.
According to the arrest report, officers met with the victim, who said he had put four checks in his mailbox to be mailed out for bills and had received late payment fees on the bills he had attempted to pay.
Upon further research he found through his bank statements that the suspect, Rincon, had written her name on the check in the pay-to-the-order-of register. The victim provided officers with a copy of the check with the woman's name on it.
Officers learned the woman's address was in the 1100 block of Woodside Drive and made contact with her, whereby she explained that she had been confronted by a friend, "Conrad" who helped her instigate the check fraud.
Rincon told authorities her story in which this so-called friend "Conrad" had somehow sold a car and needed her to cash a check because he didn't have a bank account, adding that he told her that he sold the car for $400 but had a check for $801.37.
The woman told officers that even though she found "this weird" she nonetheless didn't think anything of it. She admitted to taking the check from "Conrad" and explained how the name area on the check appeared to be blotted out. She then admitted to filling out her name on the check, according to the arrest report.
She also told officers she took the check with Conrad to Wells Fargo Bank on Highway 50 east. She admitted to authorities that she deposited the check through the ATM at 11 p.m. on Jan. 17, and immediately took out $100 cash and gave it to Conrad, she told officers. She further admitted to returning to the same bank on Jan. 18 and took out the rest of the money from the check. She said she kept $150 from the check and gave the remainder of the money to "Conrad."