If you or a loved one has been charged with forgery in Houston, Harris County, or surrounding areas you need an experienced criminal defense attorney with a winning track record who cares about his clients and is ready to fight for your rights. Attorney Carl Haggard is an Ex-Chief District Prosecutor who has been successfully defending clients in Houston for over 30 years. He understands that there are many factors involved when someone is charged with forgery — often times people are not even aware that they may be committing forgery. Call (832) 328-0600 or use the short email form to contact Carl today for a free confidential consultation. Carl and The Haggard Law Firm is ready to fight for you!
Recent Forgery Winning Case Results
MONEY LAUNDERING
Case No. 1649367 – Diego M.
DISMISSED Nov. 3rd, 2021
This was a multi-defendant organized crime gambling syndicate case. Diego was a game room employee, used & instructed by the owners/operators on how to pay off on the slots. Our strategy was to get Diego to cooperate early. This greatly aided the DA’s office in pressuring the owner co-defendants to turn & help prosecutors get to even deeper target defendants. Diego’s early & complete cooperation facilitated that for the DA’s office. law enforcement & for justice. The risk was because no precise “deal” was made for his cooperation to protect his testimony from the accusation that he got a “good deal” for his cooperation; that he was lying against the co-defendants to save his own neck. But it strengthened his value to the DA’s office in prosecuting the kingpins behind this organization, even though Diego was vulnerable to retaliation for it. Mr. Haggard felt the risk was worth it & argued in to the State, “If it could be said that there is a true “victim” in a gambling case like this, it was my client.”
FORGERY OF FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT [CHECK]
Case No. 1528754 – Victor J.
DISMISSED Jan. 23th, 2017
Victor had been a Starbucks manager who lost his job and needed something short-term while he searched for another management position. He found a job online through Zip Recruiter as a personal assistant in which he received checks, among them one for over $25,000, which he would cash, buy supplies for the out of state company, and then keep a portion as his pay. He was arrested at a bank while trying to cash one of these forged checks. We used online communications and other documentation between Victor and the scam artist to sufficiently prove he could not have known it was a scam.
FORGERY OF FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT [CHECK]
Case No. 1417721 – Kristy D.
DISMISSED
Kristy was introduced by a mutual friend to con men involved in an organized crime ring. They gained her confidence so far as to get her permission to make a stolen check out to her, deposit it into her account, and withdraw funds, using the “out of state” excuse and putting her on the phone with the “aunt” whose check it was. Kristy was later ID’d by police using bank surveillance and Facebook photos; bank records via Grand Jury subpoena confirmed Kristy as the account holder. The con men could not be located due to their use of assumed names so Kristy was the only one charged. Only later did she learn they had stolen the check from an elderly woman’s car while visiting her husband’s grave. Due to a discrepancy between police and defendant timelines, we had to defend against the allegation that she was present during the burglary. The State was also concurrently trying to charge Kristy with a related case of Credit Card Abuse as police had photos of her shopping with a credit card stolen out of the same burglary. We successfully quashed both of these attempts and prevented 2 other bogus charges – Burglary of Motor Vehicle and Credit Card Abuse – from being filed against Kristy. But the break of the century in the Forgery case came one morning in court while preparing her case for Trial when, in a one in a billion occurrence, Kristy saw the perpetrators down the hall. The DA’s could not have cared less but Mr. Haggard, as a former Chief Prosecutor, realized the potential implications of this for Kristy’s case and seized the opportunity to immediately arrange a meeting with the DA’s office and Organized Crime to get into confidential records so Kristy could ID them. We used as further evidence the fact that once she had seen them in the courthouse Kristy began receiving physical threats in an effort to silence her. We advised, protected and assisted with getting her moved out of town to a safe house, as the men were considered dangerous, and pressed home for a Dismissal for Kristy, the 2nd victim in this case.
FORGERY OF FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT [CHECK]
Case No. 1126694 – Michael S.
DISMISSED
Mike was receiving SSI for an emotional disability at the time of his arrest on a Forgery charge. He was victimized by someone who took advantage of his mental disabilities to persuade him to negotiate several high-dollar checks from a “Trustee” for “yard work”. We tenaciously worked to prove Mike’s disability and lack of fraudulent intent and worked equally hard to prove malicious intent in the real fraud-purveyor.
Mr. Haggard took my son’s case with a confident and positive approach, kept us informed and explained the procedures so that we understood everything. He worked to get the case dismissed and truly believed in my son’s innocence. Mr. Haggard was persistent!.
FORGERY OF A FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT – CHECK
Case No. 1260762 – Emily B.
GRAND JURY NO-BILL
The Complainants in this case were the parents of Emily’s recently-deceased fiance. In a strange twist of events, Emily was inside the bank trying to cash a check on their account at the very time the parents, inside the same bank, were attempting to close that account due to several negotiated checks they told police they never gave to Emily. She also had a Visa debit card for the same account in her possession. The parents alleged to police she had stolen their checkbook and forged several checks after the death of their son. Yet, we claimed and compiled evidence in support of the contrary. Emily continued the relationship with her fiance’s parents including important online communications through MySpace. Although not guilty, Emily did as advised – declining to answer police questions until her Miranda rights were read and she was formally interrogated. We compiled a large amount of unconventional evidence in support of our defense: reconstructed timelines, bizarre MySpace emails and photos showing conflicting motives on the part of her father-in-law, and cell phone and text message records, as well as subpoenaing all pertinent banking records. Using his knowledge in Forgery laws and defenses and the Grand Jury procedure, Mr. Haggard moved to get the case as quickly as possible before the Grand Jury and then coached Emily on how to testify to present her case in the best light before the Grand Jury.
Mr. Haggard believed in me and in my case when no one else did. He worked extremely hard on my case and did everything in his power to get it dismissed. He helped me to feel more confident about my case by constantly keeping me informed on everything going on. I highly recommend HLF to anyone that needs a good attorney that will fight all the way for them.
~ Emily B.
FORGERY OF A FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT – CHECK
Case No. 1156928 – Chiara B.
GRAND JURY NO-BILL
Chiara was a struggling college student victimized by an internet scam promising payment for online surveys and work as a mystery shopper. Chiara received a very large check and naively tried to cash it, waiting patiently when told to wait, not realizing the police had been called. Investigation revealed the account the check was written on had been closed for fraudulent activity. This fact, plus other evidence, along with several excellent Affidavits including from university and post office personnel attesting to the care Chiara had taken to ascertain the check’s validity before cashing it, as well as to her proven probity and honesty, helped us to save her college career.
FORGERY OF A FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT – CHECK
Case No. 982275 – John B.
DISMISSED
Our client tried to deposit a fraudulent check for a very large sum tendered to him in a real estate transaction. Although he was actually the victim in this real estate transaction and had no idea the check was not legitimate, he was charged with forgery. We were able to develop and use the favorable circumstantial evidence in the case to show our client’s innocence and get the case dismissed.
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