So, this guy walks into a doctor's office...
Stop me if you've heard this before. Man goes into a doctor's office, gets some minor work done. Goes to the cashier and pays by check, gets a receipt noting that he paid by check. He leaves. Within minutes, a woman walks in, says she is with the man, he paid out of the wrong checkbook, can she have the check? She'll go home and return later with a check drawn on the proper account, honest.

Cashier says "Sure, no problem." Gives the check to the woman. The patient and the woman accomplice never return.

The doctor's office starts calling, asking where the check is. Man argues with the caller, with an argument that goes something like, "I paid for the service with a check, you gave me a receipt. I still have the receipt. I don't know who you gave the check to, I don't know anything about her. I don't care who you gave the check to. I gave you a check, I have a receipt, I paid. Go away."

Now just who would be dumb enough to try a scam like that? Oh wait, let me guess...
The man was Harbhajan Singh Ahluwalia, known to the doctors office as "Harry Ahluwalia." He's known to voters as Harry Walia. The date of the check-swapping scam was December 4, 2006. The amount Ahluwalia tried to scam the Healthpark Surgery Center for was $858.00.

It's not a new scam. In my early twenties, when I first moved to Florida in the late 1970's, I worked as a loss prevention manager for a couple of different retail chains for a few years. I've heard of this same scam done a couple of times, only with the variant that the other checkbook was out in the parking lot. It's an old scam, a bold one that you can't pull off very often, but it is anything but an original way to defraud a merchant.

In fact, a very young Tatum O'Neill can be seen doing a variant of this scam in the old film, Paper Moon.

As I recall, the two times that learned about it from inter-corporate retail security alerts, the scammers got away with merchandise totaling a couple of grand each. Video cameras in stores were not the norm yet, and since the scammers took the checks with them, no documentation was left behind to identify them.

When Harbhajan Singh Ahluwalia tried this scam on doctors at the Healthpark Surgery Center in December of 2006, he made two key mistakes. The first was, he didn't try to get away with very much. $858.00 to be exact. The risk here far outweighed the gain.

The second was that he did this at a doctor's office where they had all kinds of prior documentation on him. So they knew exactly who he was. This was akin to wearing a face mask to rob a bank and then using your own pre-printed deposit slip to write the robbery note on.

Attorneys never identified the woman who came back in to get the check, but then, according to sources involved in the case, neither the doctor or the attorneys ever tried.

What Harbhajan never thought through was the end legal argument: if that receipt you have is as valid as you say it is, please provide us with a copy of your canceled check. That was when Ahluwalia stopped communicating with his own attorneys.

It's work like this that gets you featured in stories with tags like "America's Dumbest Criminals."

Ahluwalia gets stupid with the attorneys, cops an "in your face" attitude
Normally, a doctor's office refers unpaid bills to a collection agency. It is very rare for a doctor to sue unless it is for a sizable amount of bucks. Ahluwalia so enraged everyone else involved in this mess that the doctor's office hired an attorney, Kevin Staas. Judging by the initial complaint filed by Staas on June 1, 2007, on behalf of the surgery center (PDF file, 5 pages, pops in new window), Staas was given the instructions to crucify patient Harry Ahluwalia.

Ahluwalia hired attorney Brent McPeek to defend him. McPeek eventually bombed out of this case with the court's permission after notifying the court in writing that his client wouldn't cooperate with him, wouldn't even return his calls.

All Ahluwalia had to do to get out of this case early was either to provide a canceled check for the payment which he said he had made OR pay the money OR show some proof of indigence. He wouldn't do any of those. Instead, he stuck to his story that he already paid, it wasn't his fault that the Surgery Center decided to give his check to someone that he knew nothing about.

Oh the irony...
Ahluwalia reportedly paid off the surgery center, plus the money owed to Staas. Staas subsequently filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal in November of 2007 after Ahluwalia's obligations were fulfilled.

The exact amounts that were settled aren't in any settlement papers on file at the courthouse. When contacted, Staas wouldn't say what the total amounts paid were, only that Ahluwalia had, in the end, paid the agreed amounts. Staas had initially filed for a total judgment of $1,538.00, but that was before Ahluwalia put up a bit of a fight. The summary default motion filed by Staas in July of 2007 (PDF file, 2 pages, pops in new window) notes that Ahluwalia went through some three other attorneys besides McPeek, none of whom could provide any paperwork to show any kind of material defense for Ahluwalia during the lawsuit. In fact, they didn't even have any papers signed by Ahluwalia to show that they could legally defend him.

In the end, it ended up costing Ahluwalia way more money than he originally owed. There were the doctor bills, plus Kevin Staas attorney's fees, which were, I'm guessing, right around $3,000 or so. Plus he had to pay the three or four attorneys that he sequentially hired to play musical chairs with Staas and the court. So, figure, what, about $6,000 total? Ahluwalia has turned the phrase "common sense" into a campiagn mantra, but I'm not seeing any in this mess. I'm seeing a lot of lies and misrepresentations, which I'm also seeing in his campaign rhetoric.

The irony here is obvious. This is the same Harry Walia who night after night on the campaign trail has berated city council members and their attorney for the what he claims were numerous legal bungles. As Harry Walia, he promises no more "in your face" attitudes when it comes to lawsuits.

Really.

Watch out folks, don't touch that dial...
...stay tuned, kiddies, there's more to come... ...up next: Ahluwalia, with the help of his new friend Heather Skeffington (remember her?) scam a local landscaper out of $900, unsuccessfully tries to have the landscaper thrown in jail to avoid paying; for his trouble, Ahluwalia now has a brand spankin' new construction lien on his home for $900... no more "in your face attitude," eh, Harry?  So, how's that working out for ya?

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.