Scott v. State

867 N.E.2d 690, 2007 Ind. App. LEXIS 1211, 2007 WL 1630622
Indiana Court of Appeals·Decided June 7, 2007·No. 48A05-0609-CR-527·Published·Cited by 27 cases

Opinion

OPINION

MATHIAS, Judge.

Chaffew James Curtis Scott (“Scott”) was convicted by jury trial in Madison Circuit Court of Class C felony forgery and Class C felony money laundering. On appeal, he raises two issues:

I. Whether the convictions are supported by sufficient evidence; and,
II. Whether one of the convictions is barred by double jeopardy.

Concluding that Scott’s convictions are supported by sufficient evidence and that they do not violate Indiana’s double jeopardy clause, we affirm.

Pacts and Procedural History

In the summer of 2005, Scott moved to Anderson to be closer to his brother, who was serving a sentence in Pendleton Correction Facility for a forgery conviction. In October of 2005, Scott moved in with Gwendolyn Peoples (“Peoples”), her two children and her father. Once Scott moved in with Peoples he began looking for a job. His search often included trips to the public library and the Work One Center for Unemployment where he would email correspondents to look for work. Scott also posted his resume on several Internet job sites including Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com.

In September, a person purporting to be from German IT Corp. emailed Scott about becoming a financial representative for the company in the United States. According to the email, Scott would agree to accept invoice payments from the company’s debtors located in the United States and then wire the money overseas to German IT in return for a ten percent commission. Scott agreed to accept the checks for German IT, and in a few days he received three checks each for $900 in the mail. The checks were in sequential order, the signature was misspelled, and the handwriting on various portions of the checks was not the same. Peoples warned *693 Scott that the checks “didn’t look right.” Tr. p. 53.

Despite this warning, Scott attempted to deposit the three checks into his account with the Teacher’s Credit Union. The teller became suspicious and put a thirty-one-day hold on the checks. Monitoring his bank account online, Scott learned that the checks had not cleared and that he had been assessed fees. Scott stated that after he discovered the checks had not cleared, he “realized that [he had been] scammed.” Id. at 115. Teacher’s Credit Union lost no money in the transaction, and therefore made no report to the police.

However, Scott continued to answer the same types of emails asking for “financial representatives” in the United States. In November 2005, Scott responded to an email from someone alleging to work for Petate Industries. Scott said that he was interested in becoming a “financial controller” for the business and requested information be sent as soon as possible. Ex. Vol., Ex. 19. Scott also responded to a Maureen Lau (“Lau”), who alleged she was a Chinese citizen working for SKL Global Finance International in the United Kingdom. Lau proposed the exact same payment offer: checks would be sent to Scott who would then wire the money overseas minus his commission. Scott agreed to participate and forwarded Lau his name and contact information.

After this contact with Lau, Scott received a FedEx package in December 2005 with a check issued by Western Beef for more than $68,000. The check appeared to be written to Scott personally. Scott initially told Peoples, “I don’t know where this check came from.” Tr. p. 62. However, upon searching through his email, he discovered that Lau had the check delivered to him.

Scott attempted to open a bank account at several banks to deposit the check but learned that he needed a second form of identification. On January 10, 2006, after receiving a social security card, Scott went to Star Financial bank in Anderson to open an account. The customer service agent became suspicious that a company would write a personal check for more than $68,000 and called Western Beef to verify the transaction. She learned that the check had initially been issued to a fuel company called Amerada Hess Corporation and that it must have been tampered with. The bank personnel then called the Anderson police department.

Scott was transported to the Anderson police department where he was Miran-dized and interviewed by Detective Trent Chamberlin (“Detective Chamberlin”). In this interview, Scott claimed that he believed he was legitimately employed by Lau and that he had kept all of the correspondence to prove his claim. He asked to call Peoples to bring Detective Chamberlin printouts of his email correspondence with Lau. However, Scott became visibly agitated when Peoples brought all of his email correspondence. Apparently, he did not want Detective Chamberlin looking through all of his emails. Instead, he wanted to pick out and find the emails specifically from Lau.

In the stack of emails, Detective Cham-berlin found Scott’s correspondence with Petate Industries and German IT regarding the same financial representative scheme. He also found correspondence relating to a Nigerian money scam. Scott admitted he knew the Nigerian scheme was fraudulent but claimed he was keeping the correspondence to turn over to the police. Tr. p. 120.

Scott also told Detective Chamberlin that he had never done business with'German IT. When confronted with the copy of an email from German IT asking if *694 Scott had received three checks for $900, Scott said that he had never received those checks and that he had emailed German IT to tell them that he had not received the checks. Detective Chamberlin then asked Scott if he had tided to cash the three checks at Teachers Credit Union. Scott denied that he had. Detective Chamberlin told Scott that if he had tried to cash them, then the police would be able to obtain copies of the checks from the bank. Scott then changed his story and said that he had misunderstood the question.

On January 11, 2006, the State charged Scott with one count of forgery and one count of money laundering. A jury trial commenced on April 11, 2006. At trial, Western Beefs director of security and loss prevention testified that Western Beef had never had a relationship with Scott, nor had Western Beef authorized any check to be issued to Scott. On April 13, 2006, the jury found Scott guilty of both charges. The trial court conducted a sentencing hearing on May 1, 2006, sentencing Scott to two concurrent terms of four years with two years executed and two years suspended to informal probation. Scott now appeals. Additional facts will be added as necessary.

I. Sufficiency of the Evidence

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Scott v. State, 867 N.E.2d 690, 2007 Ind. App. LEXIS 1211, 2007 WL 1630622 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007).

867 N.E.2d 690 (Scott v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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