La. police: Ex-public defender printed $1M in bogus payroll checks, then gambled across US

La. police: Ex-attorney printed $1M in fake checks

NEW ORLEANS — A former public defender printed $1 million in bogus payroll checks so he could gamble at casinos from Florida to California, sometimes using Web site logos to make the checks appear legitimate when co-conspirators cashed them, authorities said Wednesday.

Charles Bradford, 47, is believed to be from New Jersey but has had no fixed address since getting out of prison in 2006, said Lt. Ed Baswell, spokesman for Bossier Parish Sheriff Larry Deen. Bradford is wanted in Arkansas, California, Florida, Kansas and Ohio, and may have operated in other states, Baswell said.

“This was a little reminiscent of ‘Catch Me if You Can,’” Baswell said, referring to the 2002 film about check forger and con artist Frank Abignale Jr., who went on to help the FBI catch other check forgers.

Bradford apparently told investigators he could help businesses avoid being conned by people like him, Baswell said.

“He didn’t go into specifics, but he said, ‘I know how they can avoid being ripped off,’” Baswell said.

He did not know where Bradford had practiced law, but said he was a former public defender who apparently went crooked in 1988, when he was arrested on charges of impersonating a federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent with stolen credentials. He also was accused of selling firearms to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office.

“Apparently in 1987, his mother passed away, and he kind of uses that as a reference point as to when he began a life of crime,” Baswell said. “I don’t know if he was deeply affected by the death of his mother and that triggered what he has done in recent years. But that seems to be the dividing line.”

Bradford also was arrested on charges of robbing several banks and stealing a Kansas sheriff’s identity, Baswell said.

He didn’t know what Bradford had been convicted of, or how long he was in prison before his 2006 release. After that, Baswell said, Bradford allegedly would go to a casino town, check the phone book for local businesses, create counterfeit payroll checks — often using logos taken from their Web sites — and recruit people to cash them.

Sometimes he also got people who worked at a business to provide real account numbers.

People who cashed the checks would keep one-third, and Bradford would keep the rest, usually to go gambling, Baswell said.

Bradford was jailed Jan. 22, but the sheriff’s office did not announce it until Tuesday.

A petroleum supply business reported Jan. 18 that two fraudulent payroll checks had been cashed on a business account in December, and gave police the names of the men they were made out to. Those two led investigators to a home in Haughton, where investigators got Bradford’s name and his address — a casino hotel.

Phone records led to Bradford’s arrest, and deputies had arrested 13 of his 17 suspected associates as of Wednesday. Bradford was being held in the Bossier Parish jail on $90,500 bond. He had been assigned a public defender, who could not immediately be reached.

(This version CORRECTS headlines to reflect that Bradford recruited others to cash checks.)