Two old fraud charges against a man for a Shelby Township incident nine years ago were dismissed by a Macomb County judge Tuesday at his sentencing after he paid $9,500 in restitution.
Steve John, 39, of Rochester Hills, was to be sentenced Tuesday by Judge Richard Caretti of Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens after pleading guilty to false pretenses between $1,000 and $20,000 and conspiracy to do the same for a 2015 incident, according to court records.
Under a deferred sentence agreement reached last July, the charges were to be dismissed if he paid the money to a woman.
John was arrested last January on a warrant for the 2015 case after he and two others were questioned in relation to one of them talking to an elderly person at his home while two men with the third man were nearby in a Dodge Ram pickup truck. Township police were in the area because they responded to a report of a separate incident in the same subdivision in which a rideshare driver went to a home to pick up $8,400 in cash from a senior citizen to deliver to a third party. That exchange was thwarted by police when they questioned the driver, who was “unknowingly used by an unknown suspect to pick up the money from the victim,” police said.
One of the two men accompanying John was arrested for soliciting with a permit, but officials did not release his name. Investigators said that man had recently pleaded guilty to defrauding an elderly victim out of more than $50,000 but received no jail time in his sentence.
