Wells Fargo Bank and DeSoto, Texas police thought they caught a check forger when Randolph Shaheed walked into a bank in November and presented a check to be cashed for his new job as a mystery shopper.

The check was an obvious fake, police said, and they arrested Shaheed. He spent four days in jail and, after a Dallas grand jury indicted him, faced a felony charge for forgery that could have sent him back to prison for the rest of his life.

Shaheed, 60, is a convicted murderer who served his time for crimes committed as a gang member decades ago in Fort Worth. But he has spent the past quarter-century working to do the right thing and help ex-cons fit back into society through his prison ministry.

Two days before his arrest, he was honored by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for his work helping ex-offenders. State officials told me he was an “ideal” ex-offender who tried to “promote positive change within our community.”

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, looked at the correspondence between Shaheed and the supposed mystery shopper company. I quickly concluded that the company was a fraud. Shaheed had been scammed, not the other way around.

But DeSoto Police Capt. Ron Smith was not so believing. He told me in December, “Don’t believe everything you hear.” He warned, “It’s not his first experience in the criminal justice system.” He added that he would be “surprised if it turned out to be a scam.”

Well, surprise!

The Dallas district attorney’s office dropped the charges against Shaheed last month. The office didn’t respond to my requests for comment, but Shaheed’s lawyer told me what happened.

“Fortunately, we had a very reasonable prosecutor who asked to see the evidence,” lawyer Valencia Bush said. “When you see all the correspondence back and forth, you can see these people are being duped.”

Bush told me she recently represented four clients who fell for the same scam and were wrongly arrested. But Shaheed’s was the most difficult to get charges dropped because of his criminal record.

“He’s a good guy that’s been doing nothing but good works in the community,” she said. “Certainly, he wasn’t about to risk his freedom for a couple of hundred bucks.”

Here’s how the scam worked: Shaheed thought he found a job on the Internet as a shopper who would test customer service at Western Union and other stores.

Here’s the job description in the original email.

He was sent a check for $1,950. All he had to do, he was told in written instructions, was cash the check and send $200 back to the company as a Western Union money transfer. The rest was for him to use for mystery shopping to evaluate businesses, he was told. Afterward, he would file reports about his experiences.

The scam comes in when a bank cashes a check, then later realizes it is a fake. The supposed mystery shopper had already spent the money and wired the rest to the scammers.

The shopper is responsible for the losses. But arrests for the crime are rare. Most banks know about the scam and warn off customers before it’s too late.

The Wells Fargo bank branch manager and a corporate spokeswoman both declined to answer questions about this.

The Mystery Shopping Providers Association, which represents legitimate mystery shopper programs, is based in Dallas. Executive Director John Swinburn told me the scam works because victims are often desperate for money.

“They feel this is something that was put in their lap to help them out, and they fall for it.”

The way legitimate mystery shopping typically works, he said, is that shoppers are asked to make very small purchases for a few dollars or may not make any purchases at all. Their subsequent reports to the companies that hire them are more about customer service and store appearance.

“If they make a purchase, they get reimbursed,” he said. “Nobody would send you a big check if they don’t know you, and if they haven’t already established a relationship with you.”

Shaheed told me, “The lesson I learned from this is to be very, very skeptical about things that you read about on the Internet that are offering you a job opportunity.” He now owes several thousand dollars in legal fees that he says he doesn’t have.

I checked back with the DeSoto police captain who originally told me to be suspicious about Shaheed’s story.

“What’s the old saying about a leopard not changing his spots?” the captain asked. “Some people do, but that’s not usually the case. That’s been my experience.

“It’s not our job to judge people. It’s our job to determine if a crime has been committed. If we think it has, then we file a case. … Obviously, when we file these cases, we have probable cause to file it, unless we have something to indicate this is a scam.”

The police captain urged me to check with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to find out what the recidivism rate is for ex-cons in Texas. How many offenders commit other crimes and get sent back to prison?

I did as he suggested. The answer: 27 percent go back within three years. (Here’s the report.)

Randolph Shaheed is not one of them.

# # #

Final note: After a reader read this initial story in the Dave Lieber column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the mystery reader came forward and paid off Shaheed’s legal bill. “I’m ecstatic,” Shaheed told Dave afterward.

Read the original WatchdogNation.com report here.

Watch a documentary film on Randolph Shaheed by filmmaker Mickey Grant, still incomplete by clicking on this Mickey Grant link.

# # #

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

In prison, Bernard Madoff is best buds with reputed Mafia Crime Boss Carmine Persico.

Does this bother you?

It bothers WatchdogNation.com. We can’t stop imagining the ramifications. Somebody says something terrible about Bernie, and Carmine makes a phone call.

Remember this scene from Goodfellas?

So how’s that working for you when the Greatest Thief in History has the Mafia tentacles at his beck and call? How’s that for “putting somebody away and throwing away the key?” Can’t these two dudes be separated?

This nugget of information was buried on the bottom of a well-reported story in the March 18, 2010 Wall Street Journal, “Madoff beaten in prison” by Dionne Searcey and Amir Efrati.

Duh.

When Bernie disappeared to the prison infirmary at the North Carolina medium security prison where he is serving a life sentence, everyone said he slipped and fell. Well, it ain’t so.

But buried near the bottom of the lengthy piece is the best part: Bernie is still giving financial advice in prison.

“He gave me ideas on my index funds,” a former inmate told the WSJ.

Quoting the WSJ:

“Mr. Madoff advised him to diversify, saying he should invest in funds that track the S&P 500 index of stocks ‘where my money would be in all the stocks instead of putting my eggs into one basket,’ the former inmate said.

“He said Mr. Madoff also warned him off of day trading. ‘I was trying to get into day trading and he’s like, ‘That’s not for you. That’s for individuals like me with millions to spare,’ ‘ he said.”

Then in the second to the last graph, buried, was this:

“Both inmates said Mr. Madoff also socialized with reputed Columbo crime-family boss Carmine Pesico, whose attorney couldn’t be reached.”

We called the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to discuss this, but as of this posting, no one has returned our call.

And so it brings to mind that legendary food preparation scene in Goodfellas. See it above from youtube.com.

Just change the names to Bernie and Carmine. And don’t put too many onions in the sauce.

# # #

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber