Killeen, Tx (FOX44) – A 42-year-old Killeen woman has been arrested in what Killeen police say was a scheme to take checks written to a church, then forge signatures and cash them.

Killeen Police Department spokesperson Ofelia Miramontez said thousands of dollars may have been involved.

Judith Armstrong was booked into the Bell County Jail Tuesday in the case that goes back to August of 2021.

The first complaint of theft and check fraud came into KPD September 23, 2021. The reporting person indicated checks, money orders and in some cases cash left in a mailbox at Marlboro Heights Missionary Baptist church had gone astray. The reporting person said that a congregant had notified the church about the donation they had made to the church in the form of a check that came back to them after processing with suspicious writing on it. The reporting person continued to report that other congregants had contacted them with the same problem. Through the investigation it was determined that someone had taken the checks and signed them with another name.

Miramontez said the investigation was long and tedious as it involved working with several different banks since the checks came from a variety of people using a variety of banks. Tracing the checks was made difficult in some cases by the need to get subpoenas for bank records to trace the checks.

Armstrong remained in the Bell County Jail Wednesday with bond set at $50,000. The investigation was reported still open and ongoing with a final total of the amount involved not yet available, with individual checks resulting in separate cases with check sizes ranging from relatively small to hundreds of dollars.

It was noted that some of the victims were elderly with the possibility being that there were still undiscovered victims.