Loose Change

When a Tennessee woman was ordered by a judge to make good on $1,100 in bad checks, she employed her own brand of creative financing and robbed a bank. According to Reuters, Paige Morphis left the courthouse after a hearing on Monday on a bad check charge, used a handgun to hold up the First State Bank in her nearby hometown of Rives, Tenn. and fled into a cornfield. "A teller in the bank recognized her and a search was started in the cornfield,'' said Obion County chief deputy sheriff Heath Cunningham. Morphis eluded the search party, returned to the courthouse and paid off the bad checks, Cunningham said. "Then she went home where we arrested her. We also confiscated about $7,000 left from the bank's money."

• 21 Jul 2001