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Jul 28, 2006 5:19 pm US/Pacific
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Man Gets 22 Years In Post Office-Check Scandal
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
A Los Angeles man was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for masterminding the theft of $18 million worth of U.S. Treasury checks, prosecutors said Friday.
Talcum Marsh III, 47, had a postal worker steal about 6,700 checks from the mail over the course of 2002 and 2003, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Gaffney.
The postal worker, George Hall, would then deliver the checks to Marsh or another man, Eric Muhammad, and the checks would eventually be cashed at banks and other institutions by individuals carrying fake identification, the prosecutor said.
The ring also used people inside banks and check-cashing businesses to aid in cashing the stolen checks, according to the government. The monies were divided up between the members of the stolen check ring.
Marsh pleaded guilty last fall to conspiracy, money laundering and structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements. In a separate case, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and distributing drugs.
The assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, J. Stephen Tidwell, said today that Marsh's sentence will "put a major halt, and hopefully an end," to his criminal career.
In a surveillance video shown during the sentencing hearing, Marsh was heard describing himself as an "entrepeneur" who could not be expected to act like a "peasant."
Because Marsh told Hall he wanted only checks for more than $1,000, Hall threw out any he stole that were for lesser amounts, prosecutors said.
Hall, 49, of Rancho Cucamonga, and Muhammad, 27, of Venice, were set to be sentenced in the coming weeks.
Most of the ring members who cashed the checks and worked inside the banks or other financial institutions were already been sentenced, receiving prison terms as high as 70 months, prosecutors said.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)