By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – More than $1 million worth of checks left in an unlocked desk in an unlocked office at a Winlock business last summer disappeared. But they were returned a couple of days later.
However, according to prosecutors, one of them in which the payee line had been left blank was written out and cashed for more than $16,000 by an individual who worked for Jake’s Fireworks for a day and a half.
Jake’s is a distributor of wholesale fireworks and a fireworks retailer on Nevil Road in Winlock.
Carlos D. Linares, now 21, reportedly sent an email to the company within weeks, and admitted he took the check and used the money, according to the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office.
When law enforcement spoke with Linares this spring, he allegedly said he chose the one check because it was the only one not made out to someone, that he put his name on it and had a relative cash it for him.
Linares was summonsed into Lewis County Superior Court yesterday, where he is charged with first-degree theft and forgery.
He’s unemployed and lives in Chehalis, the judge was told. Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher said Linares has no criminal history,.
Judge Richard Brosey allowed him to remain out of jail pending trial on a $5,000 unsecured signature bond.
Charging documents in the case state the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office was contacted on July 9 of last year by the fireworks company.
An employee said she’d been contacted by a girl who returned several two-party checks made out to Jake’s.
The girl said she found the stack of checks in an envelope inside a backpack in a park, charging documents say.
She was engaged to Linares, and said she found them on July 7 and that he would have had access to them before she returned them on July 9, according to the allegations.
The stack of checks totaling more than $1 million were believed to have disappeared on July 8, the same day Linares is believed to have come into the office to be paid, according to charging documents.
It wasn’t until August 11, that the discovery was made that one of them had not been returned, and had been cashed for $16,040.51, according to the documents.
Linares’s arraignment is scheduled for July 30.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
Business looses check for 16000 the Tax payers loose 80000 every year this guy Is in jail does it makes sense to prosecute this crime sadly the answer is no. By prison contracts will be filled regardless pushing us further and further in to national debt if we had good paying jobs we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Correction: they lost $16k. Small crime never pays but large crime can pay exceedingly well. None of the banksters and brokers who destroyed the American economy in 2008 went to jail and most received large bonuses.
But small time stealing is guaranteed to destroy your life.
Although I am not an accountant I have been a CEO of my own company and CFO of a popular Seattle radio station and have audited an $80 billion dollar retailer and can tell you that it’s hard for people to steal from you if you have adequate controls on your checkbook.
They got $1 million dollars worth of checks back because the girlfriend was smart enough to realize that crime doesn’t pay. They lost $1k or about 1.6 percent which is not too bad for being that stupid.
Anyway the thief seems contrite and this is one of these cases where a minimum sentence is probably the best coarse.
All of these financial crimes could be prevented with a little better control on the part of these businesses.