Three Africans Arrested In Utah For Defrauding 30 Homeless Whites
04/26/2020
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF

This story from Bountiful in Utah describes a scene where police were suspicious when they were told that

It all started when employees at the FedEx Office Print & Ship Center in Bountiful on Wednesday notified police that four men -- three African-American, one caucasian-- who were standing outside their store were acting suspiciously, according to probable cause (PC) statements obtained by 2News.

Caucasian should be spelled with a capital C, but never mind. The three-arrestees weren't African-American, a term that describes people like Oprah and Jesse Jackson, etc. They were African.

On Wednesday, officers with the Bountiful Police Department arrested 50-year-old Martin Bokanga, 41-year-old Lateek Ramon Leonard, and 33-year-old Djimy Okutennde for dozens of felony identity fraud, communications fraud, and forgery charges -- in addition to numerous misdemeanors.

The police have to explain why they were suspicious, for Fourth Amendment reasons. They saw these three blacks with a white homeless guy named Michael and questioned them.

Michael told police the trio picked him up near 1300 S. West Temple in Salt Lake City and asked if he had a Utah ID card and if he wanted to make between $1,000 - $2,000. Michael said "yes" and agreed to go with Bokanga, Leonard, and Okutennde.

They traveled to the Bountiful FedEx store where they used Micahel's ID card to print off a fraudulent paystub -- all with Michael's information -- from Tele-performance -- a place Michael has never worked, according to the PC statement.

FedEx provided police with two documents -- one was the fraudulent paystub, the other had Wells Fargo bank account information from either "a third party or Michael." Police believe the second document is also a fraud.

In the PC statement the arresting officer said:

It is a common occurrence for individuals conducting fraudulent activity to pick up a homeless person and to use them to cash fraudulent checks or conduct credit card fraud based on my training and experience."

3 men facing 101 charges; accused of stealing identities, defrauding 30 of Utah's homeless by Adam Forgie, KUTV, April 24th 2020

What these guys were doing was, in effect, a hands-on version of the famous Nigerian internet fraud. I'm assuming that the other homeless types these guys were using as their catspaws were white because almost everyone in Bountiful, Utah, is white.

The population of Bountiful is 44,708, of which, according to the Census, four-tenths of one percent are black, or 178 people. The police probably know most of them by sight. (The white homeless are having their identities stolen, the actual money comes from banks and check cashing agencies.)

And that's why the police had to go on in the probable cause statements about why they were suspicious—they don't want to have defense attorneys using the defense that their clients were arrested for commiting felony identity fraud, communications fraud, and forgery While Black.

Print Friendly and PDF