A Safety Harbor man was arrested Tuesday on charges he enlisted a woman to cash 28 counterfeit money orders.
The charges against Raul Francisco Zelaya, 50, include scheme to defraud a financial institution, communications fraud and possession of 10 or more counterfeit checks.
The woman said that on Sept. 10, an acquaintance - identified by police as Zelaya - tried to get her to cash 28 bogus Western Union money orders, Clearwater police said. The two met at a Dunkin' Donuts on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard, where he gave her the money orders, valued at $850 each, and asked her to cash them so they could not be traced back to him, police said.
The woman, however, called police.
After she handed the money orders to police, investigators linked Zelaya to another incident in which he cashed a bogus U.S. Postal Service money order for $989.50 at a Greyhound bus station on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard, police said.
On Tuesday, when investigators arrested Zelaya, they found he had an additional 243 counterfeit money orders, police said. The total value was more than $230,000.
Zelaya obtained the fraudulent checks from an online check-cashing scam. These scams commonly appear online as "work from home" job opportunities and can be posted on Web sites or appear in spam e-mail.
The "company" asks people to cash checks or money orders, keep a portion and return the remainder of the money to the "company." If a person is caught cashing a fraudulent check stemming from this type of scam, they are informed that this activity is illegal. If they continue to attempt to cash fraudulent checks or money orders, they are charged criminally.
Zelaya had previously taken part in the same type of scheme in a case handled by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Clearwater police said.
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