CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — A Jefferson County woman is going to prison following her conviction earlier this year on charges she forged a public document in an attempt to fraudulently create a new business.
Dana Marie Phillips, 53, was originally indicted in April by the Jefferson County Grand Jury on two felony counts of Forgery of a Public Document and one felony count of Uttering a Forged Public Document.
She pleaded guilty in September to one count of forgery. She was sentenced last week to no less than two and no more than ten years in prison.
Berkeley County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Jenkins said an employee at Jefferson Security Bank tipped off investigators of the potential fraud.
“I was able to take that information apply for the search warrant and obtain a search warrant for Google records and business transactions,” Jenkins said.
The information was then sent to an investigator in Frederick County, Maryland who was able to put everything together for prosecution. Jenkins said it was a cooperative effort among different agencies and between states.
West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, who was flanked by some of those who were part of the investigation as he made remarks at the historic Jefferson County Courthouse, explained what investigators revealed following their determination that a document she was trying to use at the bank was not legitimate. “After further investigation by these various law enforcement agencies, it was discovered that a business owner paid the now convicted Dana Marie Phillips to file the business paperwork and open a second business. Mrs. Phillips owned her own separate business and frequently filed business paperwork for surrounding businesses, and the victim in this case had used Miss Phillips Services in the past for other filings. My staff were able to determine that the business document was forged by comparing the filing dates and login history to our online business system.”
Newly-appointed interim Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Steve Groh said it’s important to have sound public documents. “The forged public document is in a way worse than a normal document because everyone in the public has to rely on it and the basis of the system,” Groh said.
“You rely on a deed, you rely on the records in the Secretary of State’s office,” Groh said. “In a normal forgery, it’s almost a one-on-one thing. Someone forges a bad check and that limits it. But here, if there’s a forged public document, any number of people could rely on that.”
As to the potential impacts on the public of a forged document that might lead to, in this case, an illegitimate business being set up, Groh said, “People rely on that document. They would, say, do business with this LLC and then years later when they rely on the protections that LLCs provide, it doesn’t exist.”
For example, if a customer had a legal claim against it, that claim could be denied because the business technically does not exist.
Groh said there could be downstream consequences to other businesses or claims that had done business with the illegitimate one. “And this cascades through other business relationships where you can’t even estimate the number of people that could rely on it, especially a popular business,” he said.
Warner said you have to be able to count on public documents.
“It’s of the utmost Importance to be able to count on the documents that we have in the record rooms at our courthouses where people can depend on them for years to come,” Warner said.
