Government Check Thefts Tied to S.F. Forgery Ring

An international forgery ring, possibly involving postal employees, has been stealing U.S. government checks from the mails and may be responsible for nearly 8,000 missing Social Security checks in Northern and Central California this month, officials said.

“It appears to be a group of Filipino nationals in the San Francisco Bay Area that are stealing government checks and other items of value, including credit cards and money orders,” said Richard McDrew of the San Francisco’s Secret Service office.

‘Can’t Be Traced’ “In almost every instance the checks do not show up in this country, but show up in the Philippines. Exactly what the connection is with the Bay Area is the missing link,” McDrew said last week.

About 2,800 Social Security checks due to reach elderly, disabled or other beneficiaries last Thursday in various Bay Area cities did not arrive. Another 5,000 bound for Fresno, Modesto and Stockton in Central California didn’t show up either. The missing checks have a face value of nearly $6 million.

“I don’t know what happened to them,” said Horace Hinshaw, a spokesman for the Postal Service in San Francisco. “We are hoping they have just been misplaced or mis-routed, but they can’t be traced at this point.”

Last month, 600 Social Security checks never reached recipients in San Leandro, across the bay from San Francisco. In November, 1983, 1,500 checks were missing from the San Mateo, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale areas, also near San Francisco. They turned up in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Far East where they were cashed.

Secret Service agents and postal officials in San Francisco and Honolulu disclosed last Nov. 12 that an international forgery ring centered in the San Francisco Bay Area stole thousands of Social Security, Veterans Administration and various other checks from the mails.

“The common denominator was that the checks all passed through the postal facility at San Francisco airport,” McDrew said. “Some arrests were made, but it hasn’t stopped.”

Bob Fouts, spokesman for the regional Social Security office, said substitute checks are issued to recipients who fill out forms at their local offices.