For those unfamiliar with Check Kit, this involves writing a fraudulent check from one bank account and increasing the size of another bank account. If you have enough accounts, you can artificially inflate the size of each one to make it look like you have real money until someone notices your plan.

Fred Buchzam owned 15 Ponderosa Steakhouses when he got caught up in what is arguably the biggest checkkite program in history that hit northern Ohio. According to the paper, he ran counterfeit checks totaling about $824 million from each of Ponderosa Steakhouse’s 15 accounts. Akron Beacon Journal. The scheme lasted 21 months until First Merit Bank realized it was losing millions of dollars in a game of checkkiting that Boukzam was playing. More than 44,000 checks were involved, and the number of checks he increased to over 300 per day.

Boukzam pleaded guilty in 2008 and was ultimately sentenced to 33 months in prison, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. With $4.9 million to $4.25 million a day he’s cashing checks, that’s a bit too much to deny. Nine of his fifteen restaurants have closed. But the owners of two of Bukzam’s rented restaurants have opened new buffets, renaming them to Christine’s Home His Buffet and Grill, and offering higher quality food. Did. There are still Ponderosa Steakhouses in the Midwest (there’s one in Florida), but they’re not as prominent as they once were.