An Ocala woman whose unique tattoos helped Marion County sheriff’s deputies identify her was arrested early Monday morning in connection with cashing a bad check at a local grocery store earlier this year.
Joanna Marie Strange, 28, was taken into custody and charged with larceny/petit theft and fraud. She is being held on $3,000 bond and is due in court May 28 at 9 a.m. to answer to the charges.
Deputies became involved in the case after a woman called them on Feb. 7 to report that one of her personal checks was forged and cashed at the Publix grocery store at 303 SE 17th Street in Churchill Square. The victim, who lives in the 6000 block of NW 62nd Place in Ocala, said the check was for $100 and was made out to Joanna M. Strange, a sheriff’s office report.
The woman added that she hadn’t given anyone permission to cash one of her personal checks, nor had she even written a check in about two years.
A deputy obtained surveillance footage from the Publix store and saw a white female wearing eye glasses, dark pants and a maroon-and-gray tank top remove a check from her purse and provide it to a cashier, along with what appeared to be her identification card or driver’s license. The deputy noted that the woman had long, straight brown hair and “several unique tattoos on both of her arms,” the report says.
The cashier is then seen appearing to compare the name on the check to the identification that the woman provided by holding them up next to one another to confirm the signatures match, the report says.
The video, which was noted as being of a high quality, “clearly” showed a tattoo on the woman’s right shoulder that was a portrait of a woman’s face. And the Publix manager said per company policy, his employees won’t cash a check if the name on it isn’t the same as the one provided on a driver’s license or ID card, or the person presenting the identification doesn’t appear to the be the same person pictured on the card.
A computer check revealed that Strange, who lives at 4060 SE 23rd Terr. in Ocala, had the same unique tattoo of a woman’s face on her right shoulder area as the person in the video illegally cashing the check. Other tattoos also were confirmed through the most recent jail booking photo taken of Strange, which showed all of her tattoos that were “clearly visible” in the video footage.
Strange’s arrest Monday isn’t her first venture into the Marion County legal system. In fact, she’s been held in the jail four times since September 2009. Each of the other three arrests – Sept. 5, 2014; May 23, 2010 and Sept. 4, 2009 – all came on battery charges, jail records show.