Profile in Paper Was Bad News for Scam Suspect

No one would confuse the Wall Street Journal with television’s “America’s Most Wanted.”

But for Donald Lee Peterson, sitting in the Orange County Jail, the two might seem interchangeable.

Until his arrest April 20, the day after a profile of him appeared in the Journal, the 56-year-old Peterson was wanted on charges of posing as a bookkeeper at seven West Coast businesses over the past seven years and embezzling in excess of $600,000.

In late 1993, a Huntington Beach company named Nathan J. International Inc., reported to police that its bookkeeper had embezzled $44,000. An investigation by the Police Department’s fraud unit indicated that the man, using the name Michael Hammond, had been operating throughout the state.

Customarily, police said, Hammond--or David Shelton or 13 other aliases--would answer ads for a bookkeeper at a small business, using a faked resume. Then he would create false suppliers who billed for work never done, according to Huntington Beach Lt. Charles R. Poe. Sometimes he would deposit only a fraction of money paid to the business, siphoning off the rest for himself, Poe said.

On April 19, using information provided by Huntington Beach police, the Wall Street Journal profiled the man and the scam in a 1,100-word article on the front of its second section.

According to the Journal, an unnamed man, believed to be in his 50s, had been victimizing small businesses from San Jose to Long Beach to Huntington Beach.

At midnight, after reading the Journal story and recognizing his employee, a business owner called Huntington Beach Police, Poe said.

“The Wall Street Journal is not something you think of for something like this to happen,” Poe said.

The business owner asked police not to identify him or his business, “Probably out of embarrassment,” Poe said.

The next day, Huntington Beach detectives arrested Peterson at the business without incident.

“He didn’t say or do anything,” Poe said.

Peterson is being held on a $1-million warrant from San Jose and on $500,000 bail for two counts of grand theft in Orange County.

Police don’t know much about Peterson, apart from his name, which they learned through fingerprint identification.

“We have absolutely no idea where he’s from, and he won’t tell us,” Poe said.

Since his arrest, Poe said, investigators have traced Peterson’s record to the 1950s, when he served time in federal prison for similar scams.