An Upper Bucks County man is facing charges after it is alleged he forged documents and lied about military service in a scheme to get money from a Middletown Township couple.
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Marc A. Cheeseman, 49, of Silverdale Borough, was arraigned last week on 17 charges, including theft by false deception, forgery, identity theft, deceitful business practices, receiving stolen property, and misrepresentation of a member or veteran of the military.
According to court papers filed last week, an elderly couple came to the Middletown Township Police Department in November 2020 to report they had been victims of a scam. The couple, residents of the township’s Levittown section, said they had loaned Cheeseman, a family friend, hundreds of thousands of dollars between June 2017 to November 2020.
An investigation by Middletown Township police found the couple lost $319,882.65, but the couple valued the loss with interest at more than $500,000, authorities said.
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The investigation found Cheeseman was loaned money by the couple through cash, credit card purchases, wire transfers, personal checks, pawned jewelry and valuables, proceeds from the sale of two classic vehicles, and use of an EZ-Pass, court papers detailed.
A detective found the couple let Cheeseman have the funds after he provided documents, which turned out to be forged, authorities said.
Cheeseman also told the couple he was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and had a U.S. Navy and District 1017 Carpenter’s Union pension, but the funds were frozen and the money would help release his pensions, authorities said.
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Some of the documents that were forged were listed as being from the Internal Revenue Service, the “Superior Court of Philadelphia/And Or Pennsylvania,” the Bucks County Public Defender Office, Bank of America, and the “New Jersey Department of Taxation,” police said.
“Each of these documents were determined to be fraudulent and contained several spelling, grammar, and syntax errors,” police said, adding they were “proven to be falsified documents.
Police said they determined Cheeseman had never been a member of the U.S. Department of Defense and the union he claimed to be a member of, which is located in the Pacific Northwest, reported he was never a member.
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During the course of investigation, a detective discovered Cheeseman had lost $159,889 at Parx Casino in Bensalem Township and $6,939.27 at Valley Forge Casino in Montgomery County between 2017 to 2020, police said.
Cheeseman was preliminarily arraigned late last week before District Judge Terry Hughes. He was being held at the Bucks County Correctional Facility on 10 percent of $50,000 bail.
Editor’s Note: All individuals arrested or charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The story was compiled using information from police and public court documents.
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