NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES

Training to become a certified trucker? Now that’s a real funny joke Your Honor, or don’t you know that this fucker can’t get a job as a trucker, what with his criminal record.

PAROLEE TARGETED JAIL’S INMATE FUND IN CHECK SCHEME
Judge to ask the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to offer him training that would allow him to become a certified trucker upon release.

By Jamie Satterfield

Knoxnews.com
November 29, 2011

GREENEVILLE, TENN. — Rebuffed in his efforts to find legitimate work, a parolee with a quarter-century of criminal convictions decided to rip off the folks he knew best — inmates.

"I just got tired of being homeless and not being able to support myself," Eric Wayne Cureton said of his decision to mastermind an effort to bilk the Washington County Sheriff's Department's Inmate Trust Fund.

Cureton earlier this year pleaded guilty to charges he headed up a counterfeit check cashing scheme involving an account administered by Washington County authorities on behalf of inmates whose family and friends deposit money to cover purchases inside the jail there, including toiletries, paper and pens.

Prior court testimony and records show Cureton obtained a check from the fund, scanned it into a laptop rented by a cohort and used software to create counterfeit copies. Cureton then recruited others to cash the bogus checks, collecting a bounty of the proceeds for himself.

Cureton, 42, insisted at a sentencing hearing Monday that he tried to go straight after he was paroled from a Tennessee prison in September 2010. Just five months later, however, he hatched the counterfeit check scheme.

"At the time I got released, there was literally no place to go," Cureton said. "My intention was to try to find a job. Nobody would call me back."

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer was sympathetic — to a point.

"I certainly understand your circumstance but none of that justifies taking from somebody else," he said.

Greer noted Cureton gave up too soon in his efforts to find legitimate employment.

"You can put in more applications," Greer said. "You can knock on doors."

"Your honor, I've done that," Cureton replied.

"You've got to keep doing it," Greer said. "That's my point. Don't get involved in some counterfeit ring. Just keep knocking."

Greer sentenced Cureton to 21 months in federal prison but promised to ask the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to offer Cureton training that would allow him to become a certified trucker upon release.

"You've reached a point in life, Mr. Cureton, where you've got a decision to make, and the decision for you is whether you're going to have a chance at being a productive citizen or whether you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison."