Crime & Safety

(Correction) Lakeville Business Owner Charged with Issuing Bad Checks to Employees

Richard Jule Geckler Sr. faces four felony counts of issuing dishonored checks.

Editor's note: a previous story published on July 8, 2011, stated Richard Jule Geckler, Sr., was a Lakeville home builder and that "The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry revoked the contractor’s license of Geckler’s company, Geckler & Associates, last December and fined the company $10,000." Geckler is not the owner of said company and was never fined. Patch regrets the error based on confusion between two criminal complaints for men with similar names.

The following is the updated story.

A Lakeville business owner has been charged with writing bad checks to former employees.

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Richard Jule Geckler Sr., 67, faces four felony counts of issuing dishonored checks, each of which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Geckler owned Geckler Companies, Inc., a wholesale distributing company, based in Lakeville.

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According to the criminal complaint, Geckler issued four payroll checks to employees in January and February 2010, all of which were returned for insufficient funds.

The checks totaled $14,290 and ranged from $932 to $10,326, according to the complaint.

The first check, dated Jan. 22, 2010, was the largest. Investigators determined that on the date the check was issued, Geckler had a negative balance of $8,637 in the account.

Geckler wrote three checks on Feb. 5, 2010, totaling $3,964. On that date, Geckler had $19.95 in his account, according to the complaint.

Police interviewed Geckler later in February. Geckler admitted that he had written the checks, but claimed that there was money in his account at the time he wrote them, according to the complaint. He told police that it was the bank’s fault for seizing all his assets, the complaint says.


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