A St. Michaels man has been charged with fraud in connection with the theft of checks from a reservation radio station.
Matthias Cody Slim, 22, was arrested on July 12 after police responded to a call from clerks at the Ellis Tanner Trading Company.
Caleb Kleeberger, the responding city patrolman, said he was told that Slim was trying to cash a check that had been stolen from KTNN. Slim was still at the business.
Kleeberger was told that the store had already cashed three checks from KTNN and had been told that the checks had been reported by KTNN officials to have been stolen. Slim said that he had been walking by Walmart when a man he did not know came up to him and asked him to cash the check for him.
Employees at Ellis Tanner, however, told Kleeberger that Slim had arrived in a car with three other men. The car was still in the parking lot.
The owner of the vehicle, Efrain Rodriquez, said he did not know Slim that well but gave Kleeberger permission to search the car. When he did, he found a binder filled with checks from KTNN sitting on the console in the front.
Rodriguez said he saw Slim writing in the book as has driving. A further search found more checks in a bag and in the pocket on the back of the front seat. Rodriguez said all of this property belonged to Slim.
After talking to District Attorney Paula Pakkala, Kleeberger arrested Slim and transported him to the county jail. Slim faces the charge of “fraud false pretenses swindle confidence game.”
