Charges Filed in Nearly $20,000 Rochester Check Forgery Case

Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News)- A South Dakota man is facing four felony charges in connection to a check forgery case in Rochester. 

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The criminal complaint filed in Olmsted County Court Tuesday indicates the case started last September when a Rochester police officer responded to a credit union on the report of a check forgery. The victim told police that the credit union had alerted him to forged checks linked to his account. 

Court documents say the victim reviewed four of the suspect checks that were linked to his business account and found they were a different color than his actual business checks. Investigators learned the victim mailed a business check to a vendor last August that never arrived at its intended destination and later determined that one of the suspected checks had the same number as the check sent to the vendor. 

The charges say four checks, each totaling $4,879.98, were cashed on September 2 at the credit union’s branches throughout Rochester. Authorities pulled surveillance footage from the credit unions and identified the man suspected of cashing a total of $19,519.92 in forged checks as 40-year-old Jacob John Kenfield of Sioux Falls, SD. 

The charges do not indicate how Kenfield allegedly obtained the check written out to the victim’s vendor. The victim told police the check may have been intercepted in the mail.  

Kenfield was charged Tuesday with four felony check forgery counts. He’s due to make his first appearance in Olmsted County Court on June 1.