The DeKalb County Court found Thursday there to be probable cause in connection with the two counts of fraud charged against NIU Marketing Professor David Richard Rink.

The preliminary hearing, held at the County Courthouse, determined that a crime was committed if accusations that Rink forged a fictitious birth certificate are found to be true. Rink will be tried on Oct. 14 as the pre-trial stage begins.

ink was charged with two counts of forgery “with the intent to defraud,” records state. The two charges are to “knowingly possess with the intent to deliver” and to “knowingly make” a document “apparently capable of defrauding another,” records stated.

The ruling of the court was based on the decision that the fraudulant birth certificates were capable of defrauding another person, Judge Richard Larson said.

“It seems the key issue of the ability of the document to defraud … is if a person will be deceived,” Larson said. He said it is not necessary for the birth certificate to be so skillfully prepared that it requires an expert to determine it to be forged.

ink was charged after Detective Mark Brictson of the Elgin Police Department entered Rink’s home Aug. 17 with a search warrant and discovered a birth certificate for a Timothy David Richard. It was purportedly issued by the Greenbriar County Health Department in Lewisburg, W. Va. It had a stamped signature of a Dr. Stanley Reedy.

Submitted as evidence, in addition to the birth certificate, was a social security card application form from the Elgin Social Security Office and some notes partially written in short-hand. The evidence was found by Brictson in a manila envelope in a briefcase in Rink’s home.

Brictson, who was the first to testify, told of his meetings with the clerk of the Triple A Rubber Stamp Co. of Elgin, Loretta Mickiewicz. Brictson said Mickiewicz called the Elgin Police when she became suspicious of a subject, using the name David Richard, who desired a rubber stamp for the signature of Reedy and for the seal of the Greenbriar County’s health commissioner’s office.

Mickiewicz said the subject, after returing to pick up the stamps, returned a third time and requested a new seal, Brictson said. The subject said “he was playing a joke on someone and it worked so well that he wanted to do it again,” Bricston said quoting Mickiewicz.

Brictson said both Mickiewicz and her daughter verified that the subject was Rink after looking at eight photos of similar looking people.

William Brady, the defense attorney representing Rink, said, “The fact of having a birth certificate that is not your own is not illegal.” To give an example of this being true, he said a phony birth certificate is supplied with every Cabbage Patch Doll.

Denise McCabe, office manager for the states attorney’s office in DeKalb, testified next by translating the short-hand notes which were found in Rink’s home. Included in the notes, which were not determined to be Rink’s, were notes and instructions involving a birth certificate.