COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — Columbus Police are beginning to unravel a case involving a local man who is accused of trying to cash over $800,000 in fraudulent checks on Navy Federal Credit Union accounts.
Steven Verrett-Lamar made his second appearance in Recorder's Court today and received 16 additional charges on top of the 15 he already received.
The new charges are:
- Criminal attempt theft by deception
- Financial transaction card forgery
- Financial transaction card fraud
- Computer theft
- Computer invasion of privacy
- Computer forgery
- First-degree forgery
- Three counts of identity fraud
- Two counts of theft by deception
- Two-degree forgery
- Exploitation of the elderly
- Theft by conversion
Varrett-Lamar now faces 31 counts with the investigation months from being over. Recorder's Court Judge Alonza Whitaker ordered Verrett-Lamar held in the Muscogee County Jail on $400,000 bond for the new cases.
Police say this investigation is far from over.
According to the Columbus Police Department's Deputy Police Chief Lance Deaton, the investigation started when crimes being investigated in North Carolina were traced back to Columbus. After CPD discovered the majority of the alleged financial crimes originated in Columbus, CPD financial investigators got to work.
“I don’t know that I would call this one of the most sophisticated financial crimes that our investigators have worked over the past." Deaton said . 'It was a slick scam being run by someone internal.”
Police say the current charges reflect only of two of at least eight bank accounts they are scrutinizing. Columbus Police Sgt. Jane Edenfield says the focus of the investigation is on Verrett-Lamar, who was previously employed by the credit union.
"He was an employee of the Navy Federal Credit Union, so he used his position at that bank and his ability to log in to people's accounts, to manipulate those accounts and move money and deposit checks and withdraw funds." said Edenfield. "That's a lot of the computer theft, computer invasion of privacy charges, those type of charges as well.”
CPD says this is a multi-jurisdictional and multi-agency investigation but are not releasing what agencies are involved at this time.
The first financial crime victim was Jermain Thirkield, who was killed in a shooting back in November of 2023. The second financial victim was Christopher Upshaw, Jr. who was sentence to 10 years in prison for forcible assault on a federal officer with a deadly weapon.
This is what Edenfield said about the investigation into Upshaw's account.
"He's been in Muscogee County jail for nearly a year and was in jail prior to this fraud starting on his Navy federal bank account," she said. " And then he just made a plea deal with the FBI and is in federal prison. So, everything that happened to his account was after he was in prison and he had no way to sign any of the documents that he allegedly signed or anything of that nature.”
CPD says this case could take months to unravel as financial cases often come with discovery of new charges as the investigation goes on.
"What is happening, though, just like with most financial crimes, is that every time they get into one of these accounts, they find something else." Deaton said. "It could be a loan issue. It could be some other type of financial type issue or some other type crime that [investigators] are going to have to go down and investigate.”