Tuesday, September 1, 2009

A Little Bit 'O Court Experience

so a couple of weeks ago I'm at work...just doing what I usually do, checking. When one of our former employees comes through my line. (I worked with him when he was a bagger at Albertsons.) His transaction goes like it always does, me saying hi, him saying hi, talk a little about life while I grab his cigarettes he usually comes in for. Then he hands me his money (a 20 dollar bill), it caught my attention because it just didn't look right. But I thought to myself, "why would anyone want to make a fake $20!?" We have been trained to watch for 50's and 100's but not 20's. So I give him his change and off he goes. I call my manager over to take a look at the 20 he gave me. She runs our counterfeit detector marker over the 20 and it stays black...if it was real it would have faded to a brown color. To verify our marker we take it to the bank that is located in our Albertsons. They verify that, yes, it is. So the manager calls the cops.
After taking down our info the officer leaves and not but five minutes after he does. The former bagger and his buddy (also a former bagger) return to the store to get a drink. I notify my manager and she calls the officer back to our store. The officer then arrests the two in line at the checkout! The next day we see on the police report that the kid is charged with using counterfeit and his friend is charged with possession. Very crazy story...caused alot of gossip at work.

The story doesn't end there...

A little over a week goes by, so that story is old news to me, right? Wrong, I get a call from the Utah County police, they need to stop by my house to drop off my subpoena! I was very frustrated and nervous all at the same time. WHY ME! but as you have all read, I was the one who interacted with the defendant and took the counterfeit bill.

This morning was the court date. I showed up at 10 a.m. As I'm pulling into the court building I see the kid and his family getting out of their car! wow was I intimidated. Not sure what to expect and hoping they don't hate me! I enter the court room and it's his family, another family, a few lawyers, a few officers, two inmates handcuffed and in striped uniforms, and ME :) after awhile of sitting there, a lawyer pulls the kid outside. Another lawyer comes over to me to tell me that they are making him an offer and that if he takes it, I won't have to testify, but if he does, I will. So I'm thinking to myself, Please just take it! (haha) Well it turns out that he did take the offer and I was free to go!

He was charged with a theft crime (taking the cigarettes) because he kept claiming that he had no idea that it was counterfeit. So no felony and no jail time, just a little marking on his record for theft. Moral of the story: if using a counterfeit...make sure you don't know it is :) (You get my sarcasm?)

1 comment:

Bobbie Murphy said...

that sucks... you had to miss your class for NO reason so that he could take an offer for something he knew was going to be LESS time and less of a mark on his record than he should have!