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September 3, 2024

Check fraud scheme lands Portland man in prison

Gavel Photo / Pixabay A Portland man was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and ordered to pay more than $30,000 in restitution for bank fraud and identify theft.
By Renee Cordes

A  Portland man has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison and ordered to pay a fine for stealing and forging checks.

Paul Logugune, 22, was sentenced on Aug. 29 by Judge Nancy Torresen of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. He pleaded guilty on May 1.

Court records show that from May to June 2022, Logugune and a co-conspirator broke into unattended vehicles and stole purses and wallets to obtain driver’s licenses and checkbooks. 

Forged checks were then drawn on the stolen checkbooks and made payable to the names on the stolen licenses. They then recruited others to cash the forged checks at multiple credit union branches in Cumberland County using the stolen IDs to impersonate the victims.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case.

Logugune was sentenced to 30 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $32,564 in restitution. 

The case comes amid a nationwide rise in check fraud, even as people write fewer checks, as detailed in a November 2023 Mainebiz cover story entitled, “Keeping fraud in check.”

In 2022, banks reported more than 680,000 check fraud cases to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department. That’s nearly double the previous year’s filings.

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