East Texas

By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer

She has done time in prison for theft by check and forgery, but just months after being freed from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system, authorities say she’s back to writing checks that are no good.

Smith County Constable John Smith said the merchants of East Texas need to be warned about Tyra Miller, who, according to records, has written more than 300 worthless checks totaling more than $10,000 in Smith County alone. With fines, that amount is greater than $20,000. Many of those checks were written for amounts of $5 to $10.

“There could be more, and what I want to do is warn the merchants in the county and surrounding area that her checks are no good,” he told the Tyler Paper Friday.

Officials at TDCJ told the newspaper Miller was released from prison on Nov. 1, 2007, and is on parole until April 2010. Her charges included two counts of forgery of a government instrument and three counts of felony theft by check and that those charges stemmed from Smith County, they added.

Smith said he was currently working several new cases on Miller, and plans to submit them to Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham for prosecution.

“She got out and went right back to writing hot checks,” he said.

After receiving an Open Records request, Bingham provided the newspaper with a box of documents on multiple cases involving Ms. Miller.

The documents took clerks several hours to copy.

“She had a lot of cases that had to be copied for your request,” Bingham said.

He said while Ms. Miller is not the worst hot check writer in Smith County, she ranks near the top on the amount of checks written.

“There are people who steal checks and then forge them, there are those who write checks on closed accounts, print bogus checks on their home computers and then there are those who just write hot checks,” he said.

Bingham said the hot check writers don’t necessarily make a living this way, but there are people who write a large number of checks or write checks for huge amounts, and this is theft.

“They accumulate a lot of property with worthless checks, and on some smaller business these really have a drastic effect and can be very harmful,” he said.

Bingham said the number of hot checks is declining because not many people are writing checks, but his office still sees a tremendous amount of bad ones.

“The DA’s office does not charge for services, and anyone receiving hot checks can bring them to the Hot Check Division and we will prosecute,” he said.

In the Miller case, Bingham said he protested the woman’s parole, but she was still released.

He did not know if her parole would be revoked, but said he would prosecute any new cases brought against Ms. Miller.

Smith’s office said there were nine new cases and 18 old cases they were submitting on Ms. Miller. Smith said the 18 old cases were from before Ms. Miller went to prison, but added she had not completed her payment agreement on the cases.

Records indicate Ms. Miller has only paid $10.07 on the old cases.

Smith said the last hot check his office received was dated Jan. 26 and was written to a local merchant.

Authorities and official records indicate some of the woman’s aliases include Tyra Miller, Lynn Miller, Monice Miller, Shania Miller, Tyra T. Miller, Tyra L. Broadnex, Tyra L. Broadnax and Tyra L. Wells.

“The main thing is we want to keep anyone else or any more merchants from losing money when it comes to this person writing checks,” Smith said.

Tyra Miller
(Courtesy Smith County Sheriff)