DETROIT (AP) – Police investigating bad checks say they found much more: A Detroit-area impostor who inspired a 1989 award-winning film was posing like someone else – again.
William Street Jr., 64, was charged in federal court with fraud and identity theft after he was found with documents and a white doctor’s coat with the name of a Maryland man, William Benn Stratton.
Street has two dozen convictions going back decades and even fooled the Detroit Tigers into giving him a tryout in the 1970s, The Detroit News reported (http://bit.ly/1KJdENM ) Friday.
“Oh my God, you can’t make this stuff up. I am completely dumbfounded and speechless,” said Stratton, 54, who isn’t a doctor but a vice president at ClearShark, a technology company in Hanover, Maryland.
Street was the inspiration for “Chameleon Street,” which won a major prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival. Defense attorney Joseph Arnone acknowledged the “long history here” and said he was investigating the allegations.