2 Teen-Agers Wanted in Bank Scam Agree to Surrender

Two teen-agers wanted in a check-cashing scam that exploited thousands of dollars from San Fernando Valley high school students have agreed to turn themselves in to authorities, Los Angeles police said Thursday.

Los Angeles Police Department Detective P. J. Green said that an attorney representing Trenell Floyd and Jabari McDavid contacted authorities Thursday morning and arranged to take the youths to the Van Nuys Division police station Monday.

Green said that Floyd and McDavid, both 19, decided to surrender after seeing their pictures published with a Times story that reported the youths were wanted on suspicion of persuading seven students to hand over their checking and savings account numbers.

The information was then used to deposit hundreds of forged and stolen checks, worth $61,000, into the students’ accounts, police said. Once the checks had been credited to the accounts, but before they could be rejected by the bank, the unwitting students would typically withdraw the money and give it to McDavid and Floyd, who would pay them up to $100 for their services.

The scam began to fall apart after the banks froze the students’ accounts and arrested two of them, who were prosecuted in juvenile court, police said. They and the five other students--who attended Taft, Chatsworth, Canoga Park and Granada Hills high schools--must repay the thousands of dollars the banks lost in the scam.

In some cases, the students and their parents have been forced to use money that had been saved for college or car insurance, Green said. One student from Taft High School and his family are repaying $15,000 to a credit union.

Warrants were issued Tuesday for the arrests of McDavid and Floyd, who each face multiple counts of grand theft and are accused of telling the students that they needed help getting checks cashed because they did not have their own bank accounts, police said.

McDavid and Trenell are believed to be the middlemen, who received a cut of the profits, but police are still searching for two other men who are believed to have originated the plot to steal money from banks by exploiting the students, police said.