Brandon Bochenski, the hockey player-turned-developer-turned-political hopeful, said he’s not hiding from a 2001 counterfeiting incident.
The 37-year-old candidate for Grand Forks mayor didn’t mention it when he spoke to the Herald earlier this week . He said on Friday that he doesn’t readily bring it up, either.
In 2001, Bochenski and a friend were charged with aggravated forgery, a felony, after they printed about 120 sheets of counterfeit U.S. dollars. Court records and contemporary news articles indicate Bochenski pleaded guilty to those charges in Anoka County, Minn., court in February 2001. Despite the plea, the candidate is not a convicted felon. He served 40 hours of community service, but no jail time, and the charges were dismissed in 2003.
“I was 18 years old,” he said Friday. “We got hold of a printer and a scanner and we did like what normal kids do, causing trouble, and we printed out ... we tried to spend it. We got caught.”
Bochenski said he thinks he and his friend tried to spend the counterfeit money at a gas station, and employees detected the counterfeits when they tried to deposit the money at a bank.
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“I served my time. I learned a lot from it and moved on,” he said. “Not hiding from it. I certainly did it.”
Searches of Minnesota and North Dakota court records indicate that the only other mark on Bochenski’s record is a failure to pay a parking ticket in 2003, when he played for the UND hockey team. He said that’s the extent of his criminal history.
After UND, Bochenski played for several years in the NHL and AHL. Court records for each of the states he’s played in were either not readily available or searches of them did not indicate further criminal history.
