Police: Elaborate claim of North Charleroi armed robbery was fake
NORTH CHARLEROI – An Allegheny County man is accused of inventing a claim that he was robbed of $1,200 by a man he found on Craigslist who arranged to sell him a dirt bike in North Charleroi.
Charleroi Regional police filed a charge of making false reports to law enforcement in the case Friday against Carlo Daugherty Jr., 32, of McKees Rocks, court records show.
Police said Daugherty approached an officer about 4 p.m. Oct. 25 at Lock No. Four Fire Company, claiming to have been robbed of his designer wallet and cellphone in a parking lot behind a pizza shop in the 300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Daugherty further claimed the man named Brandon who pretended to have the dirt bike for sale pulled out a 9 mm handgun and said, “You just got beat,” the affidavit indicates.
He also said he had spent the night in a hotel in Monongahela before arriving at the pizza shop that day.
While investigating the complaint, police discovered that Daugherty gave the officer a home address in Pittsburgh that does not exist.
There was no advertisement on Craigslist involving a dirt bike for sale, and there are no hotels in Monongahela, police stated in court records.
There also was nothing on the pizza shop’s surveillance camera that indicated a robbery had taken place.
District Judge Larry Hopkins issued the charge Friday in a summons.