A Tallulah woman was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison for writing at least 1,500 bad checks for more than $250,000.

Prosecutors, who had recommended a more lenient sentence as part of the plea deal than the one handed down in Jackson by U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate, said Latosha Rogers, 35, wrote many of the checks to buy food and clothes for her four children from 1997 to 2006.

In 2001 and 2002, Rogers was arrested by Vicksburg police and charged with four counts of felony false pretense. The Warren County District Attorney’s Office did not prosecute those cases, Ebeling said.

Rogers was accused of committing those crimes at The Liquor Store, 2080 S. Frontage Road, and Waring Oil Company, Ebeling said.

&#8220She was charged twice for felony false pretenses,” Ebeling said. &#8220But she has a long history with us – for shoplifting, larceny, and contempt of court. She also has three active contempt warrants.”

Rogers was arrested last summer after passing bogus checks at Northpark Mall. She waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a fraud scheme that spanned at least three states.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Rogers wrote bad checks at more than 36 retailers in Mississippi. As part of her plea, Rogers admitted using multiple Louisiana identity cards under various names to open more than two dozen accounts at banks in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

She acknowledged that she emptied the accounts, but continued to write more than 1,500 checks, totaling in excess of $250,000, to Mississippi merchants on the accounts after they had been closed.

Rogers faced a maximum of 20 years in prison had she not taken the plea deal Wingate gave her the maximum time under federal sentencing guidelines.

Rogers also was ordered to pay nearly $200,000 in restitution, serve three years of supervised release after prison and submit to random drug tests.

The Mississippi Identity Theft Task Force, formed in 2006, investigated the case. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fulcher and trial Attorney Kathleen Hamann of the Justice Department.