Crime is not supposed to be amusing, and an aspirin allegation in Lower Macungie Township would not ordinarily make one think of a multimillion-dollar caper on the other side of the state.
Still, Thursday's story in The Morning Call — about a man charged with swiping aspirin and deodorant — immediately brought to mind the case of the missing $5 million at a gas-drilling operation in the boondocks northeast of Pittsburgh.
At a Walmart in Lower Macungie, state police reported, Michael Wechsler paid for $75 worth of merchandise but not for the aspirin and deodorant he had in his pockets.
When confronted by store employees, the story said, he pulled a gun on them and fled in a white truck. (Actually, troopers said it was a pellet gun gussied up to look like a real gun.)
He was caught, it was reported, at Grange Road and Millcreek Road, which is about 3,000 feet away, so the getaway vehicle could not have been very fast.
The story said that instead of facing a summary charge, carrying a fine roughly equivalent to the price of the stolen goods, he was charged with robbery, simple assault and possession of an instrument of crime. If convicted, he could be in jail for a while.
Actually, he's already there, in lieu of $75,000 bail, waiting for Jay Leno to feature him in one of his "dumb criminal" headline jokes on "The Tonight Show."
In Indiana County, Larry Winckler was also in jail, in lieu of $1 million bail, reflecting the more serious crimes he is accused of committing. He was initially charged with embezzling $955,000 from his company in recent years, but authorities said up to $5 million disappeared.
What kind of company does not even notice that $5 million has gone missing? Winckler worked for a gas-drilling company, Falcon Drilling, so $5 million, thanks to the no-tax benevolence of Gov. Tom Corbett, is chump change.
News accounts quoted authorities as saying Winckler told a subordinate, Cheryl Brooks, that he desperately needed money and engaged her to issue checks to fictitious companies so that they could cash them, at the rate of up to $170,000 a month.
That makes me a little jealous, because I'm pretty sure that if I found a way to swipe $170,000 a month from The Morning Call, somebody would notice.
Anyway, Brooks was not charged after she ratted out Winckler, even though she did that only after another company employee discovered the thefts on Feb. 1, officials said. Also, it was reported that some of Winckler's expenses were traced to casinos, which might explain why he was desperate for money.
I hope they go easy on Winckler, because it seems to me he might have been doing Falcon a favor. They may have had sacks and bundles of money all over the place before they had a chance to get rid of some of it in the form of "political campaign contributions" to Corbett, and people could have been tripping over them.
Also, it was reported that Falcon remains solvent. "These developments will not affect Falcon Drilling's ongoing operations," the company said in a statement. As I said, $5 million in this business is peanuts, thanks to the lack of taxes.
Speaking of retail stores and bad checks, Paul Muschick said in The Watchdog column on Thursday that a Lehigh Township man got clobbered with a "domino effect" stemming from the penalties for writing a bad check at a drugstore.
The $45.78 check brought penalties from both the store and his bank, which he paid, plus a duplicate $30 penalty from the store, deducted from his checking account without his knowledge. Unaware of the extra debits, he bounced another check and penalties totaled $70 in debits that should not have occurred, although the drugstore decided to return most of the money as soon as it heard from Muschick, the big bully.
I had some bad thoughts about what could happen, theoretically, if such a domino effect continued, with that $70 causing a $140 problem the next day, and so on. So I asked the world's greatest mathematician, my brother Neal in California, how long it would take for the cumulative penalties to reach, say, $5 million.
Neal said it would hit $4.6 million in 16 days and over $9 million a day after that. "Exponential growth is interesting," he said.
The aspirin guy would have to get a gas-drilling job to get out from under that.
I made up my mind that until I can get such a job, I shall avoid paying for anything at a drugstore by check — unless I also can find a pellet gun and a fast getaway car.
paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176
Paul Carpenter's commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
TOWN SQUARE
Crime follies show why crime does not pay
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