Man charged with 2 felonies in charity scam
Published 10:38 pm Tuesday, January 8, 2008
EVERETT — An Everett man who went door to door asking for charitable donations was charged Monday with two felonies after an organization said the defendant had no authority to collect on its behalf.
Doug Earl Harrison, 46, was charged in Snohomish County Superior Court with two counts of first-degree criminal impersonation.
In August 2006 and during the fall of 2007, Harrison visited homes in the Lynnwood and south Everett areas telling people he was collecting for the National Center for Missing Youth’s Operation Lookout, according to charging papers.
The Snohomish County-based charity tries to locate missing, abducted and runaway children.
In August 2006, Snohomish County sheriffs deputies were sent to a Lynnwood-area neighborhood on a complaint of a fraudulent door-to-door soliciting, deputy prosecutor Chris Dickinson said.
The man asked for cash or checks made out to himself, and offered to hand out discount cards for pizza to those who gave him money, Dickinson said.
When located by officers, Harrison told deputies that he was merely collecting donations for Operation Lookout and intended to hand over the money to the charity.
In October 2007, “the defendant was back at his ‘Operation Lookout’ scam again,” Dickinson wrote. This time he was in the Silver Lake area of Everett.
According to documents, Harrison would flash phony credentials and again hand out pizza discount cards to those who gave him money.
When Everett police questioned Harrison, he told them that he kept cash and sent along checks that were made out to Operation Lookout, Dickinson said.
“He claimed that he did not think that he was doing anything wrong because Operation Lookout did receive some of the money from his efforts,” Dickinson said.
Harrison, who pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, was being held on $10,000 bail.
