Man’s ‘Stooges’ Fraud Earns Him Prison Time
A man was sentenced to nearly four years in prison in Texas for a fraud scheme in which he used variations of the name of a law firm from a Three Stooges episode to obtain cashier’s checks from banks.
Patrick Michael Penker also was ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution and forfeit about $900,000 in cash and property to the United States.
Penker pleaded guilty in August to federal charges stemming from his one-man operation that, over several years, bilked $1 million from credit card companies and gambling casinos.
He had been arrested in March.
A banker at American State Bank in Lubbock contacted the FBI after becoming suspicious about the company’s name, derived from the fictional law firm “Dewey, Cheetum and Howe.”
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