A routine traffic stop in Salt Lake City last week led sheriff's deputies to a forgery operation allegedly run by Lee Neal Meitzler, son of genealogist Leland Meitzler who owns and operates Heritage Creations. According to reports, Lee stole invoices from his father's business to forge passports, credit cards and checkbooks to support his meth addiction.

Leland, a well-known and respected genealogist, has posted the entire story on the Heritage Creations blog, with complete candor and honesty. As a parent myself, I can't begin to imagine the pain he must be going through right now, but his genealogy customers are obviously foremost on his mind.

From Leland: "At this point, we have no reason to believe that anyone’s credit card information was used fraudulently. It looked to me like there may have been a plan being put in place to try to do so, but it doesn’t look to me like it happened yet.

"We will be sending out announcements to all of our customers informing them of what has taken place. If anyone reading this has used their credit card with us in the last year, it might not be a bad idea to take a look at your credit card statements. If you see anything that looks out of line, please contact us. Note that we don’t believe that anyone’s credit card information was used, but I can not guarantee it as of this moment."

Read the entire story at GenealogyBlog.com.