Published: August 28, 2008 08:05 am      

Mail theft, check fraud sent to grand jury

A Laurel County man facing charges of multiple theft and fraud across the state will have his case heard by a Madison County grand jury.

Bruce Kevin Hacker, 44, of East Bernstadt, is charged with multiple crimes in connection with the theft of stolen checks from mailboxes in at least three Kentucky counties which he then deposited in unconnected victim’s accounts.

During a preliminary hearing Tuesday, District Judge Brandy Oliver Brown found probable cause to pass Hacker’s case to a grand jury.

Hacker’s alleged fraud involved finding mailboxes in Madison, Rockcastle and Laurel counties that contained blank checks issued to postal customers through a credit card company, police said.

“Basically, people will get these checks sent to them from Visa or Discover or some other credit agency and they are blank checks,” said Capt. Ken Clark of the Berea Police Department. “They are in the cardholder’s name, but they can be made out to whomever.”

Hacker then allegedly would search for other mailboxes that contained outgoing mail, Clark said.

“We have reports that he would go around searching for mailboxes with the flag up so he would know there was outgoing mail,” Clark said. “That way, he knew that there might be a check going out where someone was paying a monthly bill and he could use that check to get someone’s name and account number.”

Combining those two illicit acts, Hacker would then allegedly write a blank credit card issued check from one victim to another.

Hacker, once at the bank, would not just cash the illicit check, but use the account numbers to deposit a portion and return some in cash to himself, Clark said, all the while, leaving all sides of the scam in disarray.

“People were having checks written from their credit accounts cashed into someone’s they didn’t know. Other people were turning up with money from they didn’t know where and the banks were left in the lurch financially when the checks were reported stolen,” Clark said.

As the thefts were taking place, evidence concerning the identification of the individual was mounting.

“Pictures from bank surveillance and descriptions of his vehicle were coming in from Richmond, Berea and Rockcastle County,” Clark said.

These clues enabled investigators to utilize hi-tech, crime-solving tools.

Several very clear facial shots of the suspect were sent to The Kentucky Intelligence Fusion Center, a division of  U.S. Homeland Security.

“There were good pictures of him from the security cameras and Fusion was able to identify him through facial recognition,” Clark said. “They have access to driver’s license photos and a lot of information. They ran the pictures through and got a match.”

Once the name of the alleged perpetrator was known, police then picked up and arrested Hacker in Laurel County and brought him to Madison County for interrogation.

After the interrogation process, Richmond police placed Hacker under arrest for three counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second-degree.

During Hacker’s preliminary hearing Tuesday, Maj. Steve Gregg of the RPD said two more cases of Hacker’s alleged check scam have been reported in Richmond since the time of his arrest.

Gregg also said that when Hacker was first approached with the photographic evidence from the banks which showed him cashing the illicit checks, Hacker agreed the pictures were of him, but said “he had never been to Richmond or Berea.”

Hacker is lodged in the Madison County Detention Center under $25,000 cash bond.

Heather Harris can be reached at hharris@richmondregister.com or by phone at 624-6694 or 893-2341.