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About 100 people, divided into six rings, took part in the scheme, which started in Tampa and spread, Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats said.

Arrest warrants were issued for nine people in one Tampa group who will be arrested on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering, Coats said.

Others will be charged later, as a state prosecutor works through the cases, he said.

Sheriff's officials explained the thieves stole mail from U.S. Postal Service mailboxes in business parks, looking for checks mailed by businesses, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported.

Ringleaders quickly copied the checks so they could mass-produce them with proper account numbers, sheriff's officials said.

They would then return the original checks to the mailboxes so neither the sender nor receiver knew the checks had been intercepted and copied.

The ringleaders then created fake payroll checks to bogus employees and fake employee identification cards, sheriff's officials said.

They then enlisted drug addicts, homeless people and other "runners" to pose as the phony employees and cash the payroll checks, keeping a small portion, sheriff's officials said.

A check might total $3,000 and the counterfeiters might hit five bank branches a day, said Sgt. Timothy Goodman, who heads the sheriff's economics crime unit.

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