Remember Stephen Reginald McDow? Our very own Marisa Gerber wrote about him in July 2011, back when he got busted for running off with $110,000 that had mistakenly been deposited in his bank account. Turned out the cash belonged to a woman prosecutors identified as Michelle D. The whopping sum was in fact her tax refund and she'd made the mistake of providing the feds with an old bank account number which had seen been assigned to McDow. By the time she and the bank realized the error, McDow had spent most of the cash.
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See also:
* Stephen Reginald McDow Charged With Stealing Money That Mistakenly Wound Up In His Bank Account
Yesterday, the long arm of the law finally caught up with McDow when he
received a sentence of 60 days in jail and 18 months of formal
probation, along with an order to repay the money, although that, the DA
says, he's already done. According to a comment left on Gerber's story last July, his family loaned him the money to do that.
The DA's press release on the sentencing also points out that while
McDow never tried to hide his actions–he apparently emailed the victim
and her attorney to say that he'd already spent the money–he did commit
a crime by taking cash that didn't belong to him. After saying he'd already spent the funds, McDow stopped cooperating. “The defendant . . . [ignored] several attempts by the victim to get her money back,” the press release states. “After unsuccessfully attempting to contact the defendant, Michelle D. reported the theft to [Santa Ana police], who investigated this case.
Only one mystery remains: Who is Michelle D's tax accountant and can he or she please do my taxes? I can think of a few things I could do with a $110,000 tax refund.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).