LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A man accused of stealing and washing checks from several southern Indiana businesses was arrested in Kentucky after trying to cash one of them.
Police arrested Steve Wright, 54, after he tried to cash a check at a bank in Shepherdsville.
At least two southern Indiana companies thought their checks were in the mail, until they got calls from their banks.
"You never know what's going to happen in the day around here," said Amber Somerlotte.
Somerlotte is the office manager at Riley's Excavating in Lanesville, Indiana, so problem solving is part of her job. But a recent phone call led to some unexpected digging.
"The first call I got was from a teller saying, asking if I wrote a check to a certain individual and I was like, 'No,'" she said.
The call was from an employee at the First Harrison Bank in Bullitt County.
"I hadn't even wrote that check yet," said Somerlotte. "It was, it's blank in my drawer."
She said it wasn't the first time someone tried to cash a check in the business' name. "They ended up going to five different locations," she said.
"They attempted to cash the check at other bank locations throughout that morning and the bank flagged it as fraudulent," said Detective Casey Clark, with the Shepherdsville Police Department.
Clark said officers responded to the bank and arrested Wright.
"They were able to verify that the check that he was attempting to cash was in fact stolen from a business that is located in Indiana," he said.
Police believe Wright is part of a check-washing group connected to other stolen checks, including one stolen from the mailbox of On The Spot Chiropractic in New Albany. But they don't believe he is the ringleader.
"What these people do, they'll drop off the individual that we usually catch in these types of situations is not the person that steals the check, that washes the check, cleans the check, however you want to say it," Clark said.
After talking to police, Somerlotte reached out to the other business to compare notes.
"It was so weird," she said. "Like everything he said was what I just went through."
Right now, Wright is scheduled to be in court in early March.
Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
