Philadelphia Woman Gets Prison Sentence After Long String of Ripoffs
By Tony Hanson
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A federal judge today sentenced a prolific repeat offender to nearly 3½ years in prison for writing bad checks.
Federal authorities took over this case after repeated state convictions and sentences failed to stop her.
Prosecutor Louis Lappen says 44-year-old defendant Yolanda Garbrick has 18 prior convictions -- all various crimes of dishonesty -- and in this case she wrote 244 bad checks for a total of about $36,000, many of them while she was in a halfway house following a previous conviction.
Judge Lagrome Davis told Garbrick her conduct is unlike anything he's ever seen.
"It's outrageous to write this number of checks while you are in a halfway house, under state court supervision," he told her. "Do you have any idea where that is? That is 11 on a scale of ten. Really!"
The defense had sought a noncustodial sentence because she suffers multiple serious health conditions.