Serious Assaults And Fraud Cases Highlight Missoula Crime Report

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 13 new felony complaints this week, which is the same as last week and less than the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, this week wasn’t as violent as what we have been seeing.

“A couple of weeks ago, we had eight violent felonies, and we had half of that this week,” Jennings said. “Unfortunately, two of those were assaults on minors. There was an 8-year-old child and an under-3-year-old child who were abused by their parents. We take those so extremely seriously. There are very few things that are worse in our world. We're trying to hold that offender accountable to make sure that these types of things don’t happen again.”

Jennings said there were three property crimes as well.

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“We had some bad check cases,” Jennings said. “We still get a lot of these, even though checks aren't used as often as they used to be. At the Grizzly Rodeo fundraiser, somebody bought some auction items for up to $20,000 and wrote some bad checks to get those. You're ripping off students, you're ripping off a nonprofit, and you're ripping off people that donate those paintings.”

Checks are still valid and used in our society, but Jennings said businesses and nonprofits should be on alert.

“It feels like a real disproportionate number of checks that we see written are not valid,” Jennings said. “They're closed accounts or stolen from somebody else. On large ticket items like this, we might want to demand people bring a cashier's check or some other sort of proof of ability to pay. We're going to prosecute that to the fullest.”

READ MORE: Missoula News - Crime Reports

Jennings said there were a couple of other fraud-related incidents.

“One was $46,000 that was stolen over a series of fictitious withdrawals from bank accounts using a fake ID,” Jennings said. “We get a lot of these, and they're kind of growing. Criminals are getting a little more sophisticated in some of their financial crimes.”

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office provides a weekly crime report every Friday morning at 9:00 on Talk Back.

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