How a California Woman Tried to Defraud Multiple Montana Banks

You know, I've always felt that some of the worst scammers or criminals that "specialize" in fraud could have put that same energy toward something legitimate and they would have turned out just fine.

Call me crazy but I really believe that - just look at how much work some of these scammers put into making an easy buck!

Hey California, Don't Mess With Montana!

Now, I'm not quite sure what was going through this woman's head but whatever it was got her into some serious trouble.

"A California woman who defrauded a local bank of over $170,000 was sentenced today to 18 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, and restitution in the amount of $170,666," Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Steger Smith said in a statement from the United States Attorney's Office.

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Yikes!

Apparently, Kristin Renee Zelonish Edwards, 39, tried to deposit four fake savings bonds at four different branches of Glacier Bank totaling over $170,000.

What Makes a Savings Bond Fraudulent?

When Glacier Bank got word that one of the bonds submitted by Edwards was a phony, the bank reached out to her to see what was up.

Her excuse was that "she found the savings bonds while going through boxes of her deceased grandmother’s items with her mother."

There's just a few problems with her story.

First, authorities say the bonds allegedly purchases by her grandmother had Edwards's social security number on them and had dates as far back as 1980... seven years before she was born. How in the world could her grandmother have precicted her social number seven years in advance?

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Also, when experts took a closer look, they discovered the bonds had "several common defects and were not made with the printing presses used for authentic savings bonds."

They believe the source of the bonds to be the same as other fake bonds deposited in Idaho and Colorado.