By Melody Mcdonald and Bill Teeter, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The letter promising free money sounded too good to be true -- and it was.
Thirty people with unpaid traffic fines were arrested Saturday after they arrived at a designated location expecting to cash in on a class-action lawsuit.
Police had duped them with letters from the “Texas Division of Utilities” saying that they were owed money and that to claim it, they had to appear in person at a the former Texas Motors Ford building on Cherry Lane in Fort Worth.
In all, 560 letters were mailed 10 days ago to people with outstanding warrants related to traffic fines, said White Settlement police Detective Ingrid Retzer. Those who took the bait and showed up were arrested and jailed, she said. Nine were still in the White Settlement Jail on Sunday afternoon, Retzer said.
She said she and Detectives Tim Scott and Dana Richerson organized the ploy to collect $300,000 in outstanding fines. They carried it out with undercover officers and other police personnel acting as receptionists and as people leaving the building with checks as the quarry arrived. Those targeted had already been arrested on traffic warrants once and made a deal with the court to get out of jail but had not paid the fine, Retzer said.
“I went in there and put my name and address on a sheet of paper and took it to a woman at a computer,” said Helen Brooks, 46, who owed $502 in unpaid traffic fines. “They sent me back [to a room] to supposedly look at a video for three minutes.”
About that time, Brooks began to realize something was up.
“They told me I was under arrest and to be quiet,” she said.
Brooks, who went to the location thinking she was $382.95 richer, was not amused. She was handcuffed and hauled to jail in the “White Settlement Senior Citizen bus,” she said.
By then, she said, it had become abundantly clear that instead of receiving money, she would be doling it out.
Police told those arrested that they could pay off their fines then or sit in jail, not exactly the Thanksgiving that Brooks had in mind.
“My boyfriend had to take his rent money to get me out of jail,” said Brooks, who is unemployed.
Looking back on it now, the letter seemed pretty hokey, Brooks said.
“You know, it said, ‘Don’t bring no children.’ ”