MONROE, CT — Police traveled to Uxbridge District Court in Massachusetts on Wednesday to pick up a man being held as a fugitive of justice, allegedly trying avoid a Monroe warrant for his arrest.
Maurice Stevens, 34, of the Bronx, N.Y., allegedly deposited a $4,500 counterfeit check into an account at an M&T Bank branch on Fairfield Avenue in Bridgeport on July 18, 2023. The check was forged to appear to be from a Monroe man, police said.
Stevens was charged with third-degree forgery, identity theft in the third degree, third degree larceny and forgery of symbols. The last charge was for allegedly issuing a check known to be forged.
He was held on $1,000 bond for the Monroe charges and on an additional $10,000 bond for a warrant stemming from another arrest, which charged him with failure to appear in court. Stevens was brought to court in Bridgeport and arraigned Thursday morning.
On July 25, 2023, the Monroe resident made an identity theft complaint after his bank contacted him four days prior. The victim told police he had not written out any checks recently and that all of his checks were in his possession.
Police spoke to a bank representative who said someone hacked into the victim’s account profile and updated his phone number to one he was not familiar with.
The victim immediately froze his bank account and contacted the three major credit bureaus, police said.
The M&T Bank branch in Bridgeport found the transaction and the identification presented by the party attempting to make the deposit, a driver’s license that came back to Maurice Stevens, according to the report.
Police said the image on the license matched the person depositing the check. The investigating officer learned Stevens was arrested in Clinton, Conn., in June of 2023 and police said the arrest photo matched photo on the ID.
In these crimes, police said the main criminal has someone deposit the counterfeit check into an account with the promise of a smaller cut, adding those who make the transactions are usually the ones who are arrested.
Stolen laptop
A 63-year-old Monroe woman reported her work laptop computer stolen from her car on April 9. She told police she took her vehicle to a car wash in Fairfield on Saturday morning and used a valet service at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford in the evening, before noticing it was missing on Monday.
Police said there were no signs of forced entry to her vehicle and no evidence that the computer went missing in Monroe.
The laptop was entered into the NCIC, a national database for law enforcement, in the event it turns up in another town.
The Sun’s Policy on Using Names in Police Reports
Before the internet, newspapers routinely published names in the police blotter. The arrestees would be embarrassed for a few days, before most people forgot about it. They served their penalty and could move on with their lives. The issue with the article was archived in a library and could become an issue again if someone researched it.
Since the internet, the arrestees’ names can be searched online and the article will always come up. Even if the arrest was long ago and they are leading better, more productive lives, the report always looms over them.
Because of this, The Sun only uses names of people in police reports for some of the more serious crimes and incidents: murder, brutal beatings, robberies, burglaries, car thefts, thefts of thousands of dollars or more, sexual assault, pedophilia and fatal crashes.
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