A Queens man with the same name as the author of the James Bond spy novels was nabbed trying to pull off a scheme worthy of an ambitious 007 villain – forging checks for a whopping $11 billion.
Ian Fleming, 33, was busted last week after a July caper, in which he allegedly walked into a Commerce Bank on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills and brazenly deposited checks for $6 billion and $5 billion.
The wannabe evil genus crafted the checks on a computer purportedly from the JPMorgan Fleming Fund, a multimillion-dollar international asset-management fund, a criminal complaint written by NYPD officer Richard Providence and filed in Queens Criminal Court says.
Fleming, of South Jamaica, dreamed up his grandiose plan after pulling off a smaller scam at the same bank on July 6 – six days before he tried to unleash his billion-dollar plan.
On that occasion, he successfully deposited two checks for $350 and $1,300, a criminal complaint charged.
But the billion-dollar checks raised suspicions among bank managers.
“The red flags went up pretty quickly,” said bank spokesman David Flaherty. “Certainly large checks like that we’re going to look at closely.
“These people get good at what they’re doing but banks are spending more time training staff to detect it.”
Investigators later found that bank cameras had captured Fleming making the smaller July 6 deposits, the complaint stated.
Fleming was arrested last Thursday and allegedly confessed.
“The defendant admitted to him he created the checks on his accountant’s computer,” the complaint says.
He was charged with attempted grand larceny and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Efforts to seek comment from Fleming were not successful yesterday.
Fleming’s latest arrest comes after he was busted on Long Island last month printing four counterfeit checks for more than $138,000 from an unsuspecting friend’s work computer.
He then sent the checks to a person to whom he owed money, but bank officials grew suspicious when they found the account against which the checks were written was not a checking account.