A St. Paul man accused of writing bad checks totaling more than $200,000 has been sentenced to four months in jail but will have a longer prison term hanging over his head if he breaks the law again in the next 10 years.
Adam James Jewett-Perrizo, 35, claimed he wrote the checks because he expected to receive more than $1.5 million for selling rights to a TV show. But he said he had been duped and that the money never arrived.
The Ramsey County attorney’s office filed 20 criminal complaints with 39 charges against Jewett-Perrizo last year, and he pleaded guilty to a dozen of the charges, including one count of theft by check and numerous counts of issuing a dishonored check. The other charges were dismissed.
According to the criminal complaints, Jewett-Perrizo opened a TCF checking account in July 2012 with a single deposit of $25. He wrote checks including payments for his September 2012 wedding, student loans, custom uniforms for his wife’s softball team and his state taxes.
He continued to write checks on the account for more than two years, even though TCF closed it less than a month after he opened it. He told investigators he wasn’t living at the address listed on the account and he didn’t realize it had been closed until January 2015, when he and his wife were trying to buy a house.
Jewett-Perrizo was sentenced March 31 to prison terms ranging from one year to a little more than two years, but all of the prison terms were stayed and he was instead ordered to serve 120 days in jail. He also is ordered to pay restitution. He’ll be on probation for the theft by check charge until March 2026.