Suspected Leader of Counterfeit Ring Held : Crime: Officials believe Faustino Morales headed a nationwide scheme that cost banks and other businesses millions.

An admitted forger who dodged his jail term last fall was arrested by local and federal authorities, who suspect him of participating in a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting scheme that stretches across the nation.

Faustino Morales was arrested by Oxnard police and U.S. Secret Service agents at his home Tuesday in the 1700 block of 9th Street in Oxnard on a Ventura County Superior Court warrant alleging he violated his probation.

Law enforcement officials said they believe Morales, 26, is behind a massive counterfeiting scheme that has so far cost American Express $1.2 million and Bank of America at least that much.

Other businesses also have been victimized in the scheme, which involves duplicating payroll checks and then cashing them with false identification, police said.

“We don’t know the exact amount right now, but there are at least four main players in custody by the feds,” said Oxnard Police Detective Len Newcomb of the white-collar crime unit.

Morales was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in Ventura County Superior Court, but it was postponed until next week.

He is in custody in lieu of $20,000 bail. He has not been charged with any crimes related to the counterfeiting.

Meanwhile, arraignments were also postponed until later this month for four Ventura men who were arrested March 30 for trying to cash counterfeit checks at a Reno, Nev., bank.

Evidence seized in those arrests led back to Morales, Newcomb said.

Members of the counterfeiting ring, which extends to at least four other states, made copies of various business and traveler’s checks and employed a network of people to cash them, Newcomb said.

The suspects “have got a bunch of other folks working for them, using fake IDs and IDs they’ve obtained fraudulently,” he said.

Secret Service agents began investigating Morales and others after Morales was arrested July 16 at a Bank of America branch in Oxnard. He was caught trying to cash a $642 payroll check payable to Stephen O. Golich, an employee of Landmark Theaters, according to court records.

Morales was charged with nine counts of forgery, and in August pleaded guilty to five of those counts. The remaining four counts were dismissed.

In September, Morales was sentenced to one year in Ventura County Jail, five years probation and ordered to repay Bank of America more than $26,000.

He was told to report to jail Oct. 8 but never showed up.

Secret Service Agent Kevin Riordan would not say what led his investigators to connect Morales to the four Ventura men arrested in Nevada. But he said the two cases are connected.

“It’s an ongoing investigation, and we expect additional arrests,” Riordan said. But the forged checks have totaled “well up into the millions,” he said.

Reno police on March 30 arrested four Ventura men believed to have organized the scheme after being tipped off by Secret Service agents.

Ngoc Nguyen, 24; Muoi Nguyen, 28; Ai Nguyen, 30, and Huong Nguyen, 21, all are awaiting prosecution in Reno on charges of possessing forged checks.

They are being held in Washoe County Jail in lieu of bail of between $166,000 and $442,000 each. They each face between 40 and 119 counts because they allegedly possessed scores of fraudulent checks when they were arrested.

“They had some checks (drawn) on a business here in the area,” said Reno Police Detective Frank Johnson. “They went down to our DMV here and got IDs made in their names and cashed the checks. We were just waiting for them.”

A Bank of America spokesman on Wednesday declined to say how much the company lost to the counterfeiters.

Newcomb said more than a dozen suspects from throughout Southern California could be involved in the case.