Scottville Swindler Snatched Subsequent to Sepulture

[XLFD]

West Virginia Hotel Detectives Help Nab Local Flimflammer

Staff at a Huntington, W.V. hotel helped investigators catch a man wanted for ripping off hotels across the country for thousands of dollars including their own.  Jeffrey Paul Cochran of Scottville would come to hotels like the Pullman Plaza posing as a doctor on business, who would stay on just until his ruse was found out. 

The Pullman Plaza staff did their own detective work to help police catch him based on something he admitted to one day that seemed true to the hotel manager, Anna Pope.  In a heartfelt way, he related that his mother in Michigan was very sick right before he left, said the Michigan city where she lived.  Then he left, and the hotel confirmed with authorities that the man who stayed and racked up a $13,000 bill was indeed Jeff Cochran.

She and her pub staff kept looking into Michigan obituaries and found the name of his mother, linking the mother to the son through Google.  His mother's funeral was in two days at that point.  The manager called investigators in Cabell County and Pittsburgh, and he was arrested in Michigan just after his mother's funeral.  Effectively ending his Catch Me If You Can lifestyle.

Cochran's Charlatanry

At the Pullman Plaza, an E-mail was sent by a Dr. Anderson to the hotel saying a Dr. Cohen would be checking in, and Cochran showed up representing himself as this doctor.  During his five-month stay at the hotel, Cochran spoke to the staff, left the hotel daily, even had dinner at the hotel's restaurant playing the role of a doctor, to the point of even offering medical advice.

In another scheme earlier this year, Cochran called Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Pennsylvania in early May identifying himself as a Dr. Dan Reynolds of Uniontown Hospital. He told the resort to set up a house account for a doctor named Jeffrey Cochran, who was coming to town for an interview. The doctor, 'Reynolds' contended, was also a golf pro.  There actually is an aspiring golfer with the name Jeffrey Cochran.

After nearly two weeks of golfing and dining at the resort, a Nemacolin employee raised a red flag when he placed a phone call to a man he believed to be Dr. Reynolds and it turned out to be Cochran’s number.  Cochran absconded out a back door when employees caught onto the ruse.

On Dec. 13, 2013 Cochran checked into a room at the Candlewood Suites on Pioneer Woods Drive in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Cochran identified himself to staff as Dr. Jay Cochran, in town on business with St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center in Lincoln, with the hospital set to pay his bill.

As per the hotel's policy, Cochran was given a room, but the staff did not contact the hospital to verify his story or ask for a credit card or identification.  Cochran stayed for 47 days, checking out on Feb. 12, 2013, without paying his $3,182 bill.

Grifter Grabbed While Grieving

The hotel manager contacted local Huntington law enforcement, who got word out to other law enforcement searching for him, and to Michigan law enforcement about the funeral details, so they'd know where he was likely to be that day.  He was arrested by Michigan State Police in a traffic stop after his mother's burial; Scottville's Hudson Hawk collared four miles from the cemetery in Jamestown Township near Hudsonville and lodged in Ottawa County Jail two weeks ago as a fugitive from justice.  A fairly anticlimactic and sad end to his flamboyant career of deception.

Cochran was arraigned Wednesday, Nov. 25, in the North Union District, Pennsylvania courtroom on charges of obtaining property by deception and obtaining services by deception or threat. 

[Willy]

Here's what I don't understand and this is the reason for most Identity thievery. Why didn't the hotels check his ID and verify his credit cards or credit worthiness or verify his affiliation with the organizations he claimed to be a part of? It boils down to sloppy work by hotel personel and incompetent policies by some of the hotels to monitor and check on people staying on credit. I don't know how many times stores except my credit cards without checking to verify if I was the person named on the credit card. 

[XLFD]

Good point, Willy.  If Jeff Cochran went to these hotels in typical Scottville attire (which is not a cross-dressing clown outfit, by the way) and gave them a less prestigious lie about himself without his usual well-thought-out subterfuge, these hotels would undoubtedly turn him down for want of funds.  Why can he send these prestigious places an e-mail, pretend he's a doctor, and stay there for half of a year until they find out? 

As a former apartment manager, I can vouch that people can make that good first impression, have a clear background and still turn out to be renters from Hell that leave with a big tab.  It will be interesting to find how often he tried these ruses and it didn't work, if that comes out at trial-- or the tell-all book.  His experiences just may inspire a movie.

[stump]

Tell all book? he'll make a million bucks on that. What I would like to know is what did he live on? A person has to eat, If he left each day to do something, It seems it would be just as easy to get a job,