Recently, the Picayune Police Department made two arrests in relation to separate financial fraud cases, including one with charges pending for conspiracy to commit forgery and an arrest for embezzlement.
On Sept. 28, Teressa Brumfield, 33, of Picayune was arrested for false pretense and charges pending for conspiracy to commit forgery, Assistant Chief Jeremy Magri said.
Brumfield was previously arrested for passing two forged checks at a local business in Picayune, which Magri said led to this investigation.
Allegedly, officers with the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Department received information that Brumfield was conspiring with an inmate from the St. Tammany Parish jail to purchase large quantities of forged checks. The inmate allegedly provided Brumfield with other inmate’s personal information to open accounts in which to deposit the money from the forged checks.
On Sept. 28, after obtaining a search warrant for her residence from the previously forged checks, officers found approximately 10,000 forged checks made out to false churches and construction companies with erroneous addresses based in Slidell, La., Magri said.
Through further investigation, detectives confirmed the checks were supposed to be delivered prior to Sept. 28, Magri said.
“Luckily we caught it in time before the checks were sent across Mississippi and Louisiana,” Magri said. “They just got started with the forgery.”
Brumfield was not home at the time of the search, Magri said. However, she turned herself in later that day.
In a separate case, at 9:59 a.m. on Sept. 29, the Picayune Police Department arrested Daniel Deblanc, 35, of Picayune, for embezzlement.
In early September, Magri said the department was notified by a local business that his accountant had been allegedly embezzling money from the company. After auditing the company’s records, it was discovered that Deblanc had been forging payroll sheets and was allegedly paying himself extra money. He was also allegedly using the company’s credit card for personal purchases, claiming those expenses as business related, Magri said.
The final audit showed that Deblanc embezzled approximately $176,000 from December 2014 to the time of his arrest, Magri said.
There is no court date set at this time.