Check Counterfeiter Sentenced to Prison

A 26-year-old Van Nuys man was sentenced Thursday to 3 years and 8 months in prison for his role in a counterfeit-check ring that authorities say defrauded local banks of at least $350,000.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge C. Bernard Kaufman sentenced Peter Cockshutte Jr. to the maximum sentence possible after a plea bargain with prosecutors.

As part of the agreement, Cockshutte pleaded guilty Sept. 21 to one count of felony forgery. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop an additional 11 counts of forgery, which carried a maximum prison sentence of 6 years.

Cockshutte was one of three men arrested in June in connection with a ring that defrauded banks across the city for about a year, Los Angeles police said. Security Pacific, Wells Fargo and First Interstate banks in the San Fernando Valley were among those defrauded, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bradford Stone said.

Members of the ring sorted through trash outside banks to get checking account numbers and names and created counterfeit checks, authorities said. They created counterfeit driver’s licenses bearing the names and addresses on the checks but with ring members’ photographs, police said. Cockshutte and two others, James M. Manocheo, 23, and Robert L. Lukas, 38, both of Los Angeles, were arrested June 25 by Los Angeles police after Huntington Beach police found photocopying materials in Cockshutte’s pickup truck after an accident.

Charges were dropped against Lukas in a preliminary hearing, but Manocheo was sentenced in July to a year in County Jail after pleading guilty to one count of forgery.

Susan Tefft, 29, of Van Nuys, who was later tied to the ring, was sentenced in July to 4 years in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of forgery.