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Second maid charged with stealing check

A second woman has been arrested and charged with stealing a check from an office she cleaned in Basalt and cashing it last month, according to a police report.

Celina Romo-Guzman, 23, of Rifle on July 14 turned herself in to deputies at the Pitkin County Jail and was charged with theft and felony forgery.

Another maid, Evelyn Yessenia Paredes-Vasquez De Chavez, 28, of New Castle, also was previously charged with forgery for allegedly stealing two checks from the Basalt office and cashing them in Grand Junction for a total of $2,300, according to a Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office report.



The owner of the Basalt business where the checks originated reported to police June 5 that the three checks had disappeared from a checkbook he kept under his desk blotter and were cashed, the report states. An employee of the cleaning service the two women work for confirmed that both cleaned the Basalt office June 4, according to the report.

The $1,000 check allegedly cashed by Romo-Guzman on June 5 at an Alpine Bank in Frisco was made out to “Lucero Guzman” and cashed using a Mexican passport as identification, the report states. A Pitkin County sheriff’s investigator was able to obtain a picture of Romo-Guzman from her employer, which resembled a picture of the woman who cashed the check in Frisco, though that person was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, according to the report.




Paredes Vasquez De Chavez admitted to a sheriff’s deputy that both she and Romo-Guzman had cashed checks from the Basalt business owner. However, she claimed that he’d given them the money for “escort services,” the report states.

In fact, a representative of Catholic Charities in Glenwood Springs, which provides services to immigrants, also called the investigator and said the women told her they didn’t steal the checks, but had been given them “to soften them up,” though they never actually met the man for the “escort services,” according to the report.

jauslander@aspentimes.com

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