A woman arrested Wednesday at Wells Fargo Bank in Carson City for attempting to cash a fraudulent check was released without being accused of a crime, a detective said Thursday.
Detective Steve Johnson said Sarah Marie Zielinski, 20, will be treated as a witness to the crime rather than a participant. Johnson said she was contacted by a man who asked her to cash a bad check for $48,500. The check was supposedly from Harrah's, Las Vegas.
Zielinski, from Reno, said the man offered her $700 to cash the check.
"I was responding to a job ad over the phone," she said in a telephone interview Thursday. "He offered me $700 a week as a courier. He even offered me insurance benefits."
Zielinski said Reno investigators have seen the scam attempted several times and work at least once.
The woman received the check in the mail from a man named Donte, she claimed. When the transaction was done, she was to meet with a courier who would pay her once the money was handed over, she stated.
An investigation into the scheme is being conducted in cooperation with the Reno Police Department.
