By Terri Schlichenmeyer
When you’ve broken the law a time or two, the last person you want to see is a police officer. You’d want to stay far, far away from anyone with a badge, but then again…. you’re not Maverick Miles Nehemiah, and in the new book “The Confidence Chronicles” by Sgt. Cheryl Dorsey, you’ll see why Nehemiah spoke to a cop, and happily.
Adopted at birth and raised on a 500-acre Texas ranch, Maverick Miles Nehemiah was given a number of chores to teach him responsibility and he was held to generally higher standards otherwise, but he mostly “made sure that he was not in a situation… where [his father] or other adults had to tell him what to do.”
This gave Nehemiah time to think, and he was already thinking about easy money.
When he was a teen, his parents uprooted his life and moved the family to Atlanta, to “an enclave of some of the most prominent and influential Black people” around. Still, Nehemiah struggled for awhile to make friends and fit in. By the time he was old enough to join his high school’s ROTC, he’d settled in and grown into a fine young man with what Dorsey calls “CONfidence.”
Nehemiah could spot bull, and he knew it well.
While he was growing up, his father had given Nehemiah a number of U.S. Savings Bonds, and “the Colonel” made sure his son understood how they worked, how they matured with interest, and where that money came from. And so Nehemiah began to work a process that took time and an incredible amount of patience: he befriended a printer, learned how to print and gained access to the machines to do it. He researched, and discovered where to get the right kind of ink and the paper he needed for authenticity. He purchased the right kind of printing plates. He hired six white people to work as his “team,” taught them what he wanted them to do and how to act, and sent them to the very last place where any forger would go with fake Treasury paper: straight to the closest banks they could find…
One cannot accuse author and retired LAPD Sgt. Cheryl Dorsey of not liking her subject; she’s very enthusiastic in her appreciation of Nehemiah and his tale, and in “The Confidence Chronicles,” she makes sure readers are, too.
One might wonder why, however, a successful criminal would spill his secrets as thoroughly as you’ll get in this book. The reason is that Nehemiah did his time in prison, his crimes changed the laws, and he’s been released for years. Dorsey says that he felt that enough time had passed that he could tell, and readers will be glad he did.
This is a quick book to read, and full of surprises. If true-crime is what you want, “The Confidence Chronicles” is what you need.
