Centreville's Young Hee Kwon is in a heap of trouble. She's charged with seven counts of issuing worthless checks in Prince William County and one count of identity fraud in Fairfax County.
IN JAN. 5 AFFIDAVITS for warrants to search her home and place of business, police Officer Scott Neville of the Criminal Investigations Bureau, Financial Crimes section, presented details of the case against her.
He wrote that, on Nov. 20, 2006, an unknown person deposited a check for $3,800 drawn on the Cardinal Bank account of a particular couple. (Centre View is not revealing their identity since they're the victims).
Neville stated that the check was payable to Yeong Park and was deposited to her account at Carrollton Bank. "The check was subsequently rejected when presented for payment at Cardinal Bank [because] it was numbered out of sequence," he wrote. "Further investigation by the banks revealed the check had, in fact, not been issued by the [victims]."
On Nov. 28, the victims contacted Neville about the forgery of their check — which was now also considered counterfeit. They said the $3,800 check was cashed without their knowledge or authorization.
The victims also executed an affidavit of forgery for Cardinal Bank stating that they had not issued the check, nor had either account holder affixed their signature to it, authorizing the payment of funds from their account.
Park was the payee on the counterfeit check and, wrote Neville, "Park stated that on or about Nov. 20, she [reportedly] received the check from Young Hee Kwon and deposited [it in] her account." Then on Jan. 5, the detective located Kwon at her place of business in Fairfax and questioned her about the check.
"Kwon stated she had received [that] check from her accountant," wrote Neville. "Kwon then stated she had given the check to Park completely filled out. Kwon then changed her explanation and stated she had uttered the check to Park ... blank." According to the detective, Kwon also told him she'd given the check to Park "because Park needed money."
Investigating Kwon's criminal history, Neville discovered that Prince William County had seven outstanding warrants for her arrest, charging her with issuing worthless checks. The offense dates were Sept. 13, 15 and 16, 2006. So on Jan. 5, Neville took her into custody pursuant to these warrants.
But that's not all. During a search of Kwon's purse, incident to her arrest, Neville allegedly discovered that "she had in her possession two additional counterfeit checks [belonging to] the victims that were completely filled out and ready for presentation."
HE ALSO NOTED that these checks were exactly sequential to the check Park had deposited to her account and were dated less than a week before Kwon's arrest. Wrote the detective: "She also had routing and account numbers of at least three different bank accounts of other people and companies."
Examining these checks closer, Neville saw they were perforated across the top edge, as if removed from a book of checks. Noting that checks are normally bound in books of 25, he wrote that he believed the other 22 black checks are in a book somewhere and he hoped to find them either in Kwon's home or office.
Furthermore, he wrote that he also allegedly observed in Kwon's purse "two papers that bore numbers consistent with the configuration of credit-card numbers and expiration dates. [I] immediately contacted companies that could be associated with the numbers and was able to verify that, on Jan. 5, one of the numbers — now identified as a valid credit-card number — had been reportedly used in a fraudulent manner."
Kwon, 47, lives at 14521 Meeting Camp Road in Centreville's Confederate Ridge community, and Neville wanted to search it for more records and documents, checks, account numbers, credit-card numbers, ledgers, financial and banking records, plus computer hardware and software.
Police executed the warrant there Jan. 5 at 11:13 p.m. and seized a folder containing account and routing numbers, miscellaneous letters and checks, receipts and a partial checkbook, a Virginia driver's license copy with account numbers, an address book, a bank passbook and five checks from four different banks.
Following Kwon's Jan. 5 arrest on the outstanding warrants, plus a new charge of identity fraud, she was released from the Adult Detention Center the same day on $20,000 bond total — $17,500 for the Prince William charges and $2,500 for Fairfax County's charge. She has an April 2 court date.