PARIS – A Fryeburg man was in jail Friday on charges of writing five bad checks totaling more than $68,000, according to court documents at the Oxford County Superior Court.
Fryeburg police arrested Daniel Harold Crocker, 56, on Thursday on charges that he wrote several bad checks from June to November in 2004. Crocker pleaded not guilty, but could not make the $25,000 bail.
According to the indictment, Crocker paid two parties – William Ela and Hick’s Assisted Living Center in Fryeburg – with checks he knew would not be honored by his bank.
The Fryeburg police officer in charge of the case was unavailable for comment.
Attorney Maurice Porter, who sat in on Crocker’s arraignment Friday and who might defend Crocker, said three of the checks were made out to a contracting company owned by Ela, who was working on Crocker’s home last year. The other two were given to an assisted living center where either Crocker’s mother or mother-in-law was residing, he said.
Porter said Crocker did not necessarily write the checks, nor did he know they would bounce. He did not specify who might have written the checks.
“Basically it was bunch of circumstances that came together at a really bad time for this guy,” Porter said. “The timing has overwhelmed him.”
At some point last year, Crocker realized his finances were not being managed adequately, so he traveled to New York and Michigan to address the problem, Porter said. Crocker’s brother, who was administering their deceased parents’ New York estate, disappeared for a year, leaving him with a messy financial situation, he added.
The checks were from Adirondack Trust Co., in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a Vanguard Tax-Exempt Fund Investor Shares account, based in Valley Forge, Pa.
Porter said Crocker had to go to Michigan to deal with financial matters.
By early June, the Fryeburg police finished their investigation and tried to arrest Crocker, but because he was away, authorities put out a warrant for his arrest, according to Porter. At a traffic stop in Michigan, police nabbed Crocker and bused him back to Maine. He arrived here Thursday.
Prosecutor Richard Beauchesne said he could not comment on the case because it was pending, but said the investigation into the matter took several months, accounting for the lapse between Crocker’s writing the checks and the warrant for his arrest in June 2005.
Porter said Crocker was traveling to try to acquire the resources to pay back the amount he owes.
“In general in these kinds of cases, if a person can make a full restitution, it goes a long way to mitigating prison time,” he said, which in some cases can be as long as 10 years.
Porter said Crocker has no criminal record, was employed in Fryeburg, and also ran a soup kitchen there.
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