Gardens police: Man cashed $27K in fraudulent checks from law firm
A Loxahatchee man is accused of cashing more than $27,000 in fraudulent checks from the Palm Beach Gardens law firm where his fiancee was the bookkeeper, according to city police.
Stephen Masters, 28, is charged with grand theft between $20,000 and $100,000, forgery of a bank note and a scheme to defraud. He was released Friday from the Palm Beach County Jail on $5,000 bond.
A city police report made public last week said the woman cashed more than $22,000 in fraudulent checks. It was not clear early Tuesday whether she had been arrested. Her name is redacted from the report.
The woman began working at Levine Law Group in 2015 and was dismissed in August 2016. In her position, she had access to company checks — 68 of which she used to pay herself and Masters a total of $49,144, according to the report.
Jay Levine told a u t h o r i t i e s i n November that he knew something was wrong after his bank called him to say the firm’s trust fund account did not have the money to clear an unrelated $6,000 check. He told the woman about the discrepancy, and she said she had put the money in the wrong account. Levine told police that he asked two paralegals to look into the woman’s explanation, realized she was cashing fraudulent checks and fired her a week later.
Investigators contacted the woman twice, and both times she said she was on the way to the police station to make a statement — but never showed up, according to the report.
Levine gave investigators cop- ies of 32 checks made out to the woman and 36 checks made out to Masters, who never worked at the law firm, according to the report. They cashed the checks at Wal-Mart finance centers in Lake Park and suburban West Palm Beach.
Store surveillance video shows the woman and Masters cashing the fraudulent checks, according to the report.