Dixie Lou Denhof, also known as Dixie Lou Hand, 39, of Austin was charged with felony theft by check and felony issue dishonored checks on Tuesday in Mower County District Court.

According to the court complaint, an Austin police detective met with a representative of Kwit Trip, Inc. financial crimes unit on March 7 concerning bad checks passed by Denhof. The detective was given copies of the checks and recognized Denhof’s signature as the same as in her other bad check and theft cases. He was also provided receipts for the purchased items and photographs of Denhof in the Kwik Trip stores.

The Kwik Trip representative said Kwik Trip had attempted to block Denhof’s checks at point of sale, but Denhof had switched bank accounts, check names and routing numbers to prevent the blocking. The detective observed there were three different cases that all had three different checking accounts: TCF Bank, BlueBird and T-Mobile.

The Kwik Trip representative said Denhof had stolen more than $5,000 from Kwik Trip. Of that total, $1,566.53 had been stolen from Kwik Trip stores in Austin since July 2018.

Police arrested Denhof at her residence on Saturday. The detective interviewed Denhof on Monday. Denhof said she did not know the total amount of money involved in her bad checks at Kwik Trip and that she had not been passing forged checks “recently.” She acknowledged she fraudulently used the TCF Bank, BlueBird and T-Mobile checks to get items from the Austin Kwik Trip stores.

A review of Denhof’s criminal record shows prior convictions for theft, check forgery, financial transaction card fraud, assault and drug possession. She is currently awaiting trial for charges of felony check forgery-offer or possess-intent to defraud, felony issue dishonored check, felony fifth-degree drug possession, and petty misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia, to which she has pled not guilty.

Denhof will appear in court again on March 25.