Man jailed for 80 years after buying hot dog with fake money

A hot dog and popcorn at the movies could cost Charles Nowden the rest of his life. A Tarrant County jury on Friday sentenced Nowden, 48, of Mansfield, to 80 years in prison for passing a counterfeit $20 bill at the concession stand at a Mansfield movie theatre in November 2009. The bill — and another $120 in counterfeit bills that Nowden had tucked inside the hot dog wrapper — were apparently the final straw in a string of crimes that stretched more than 20 years.

“Charles Nowden was a career cargo-thief who needed to be brought to justice,” Assistant District Attorney Dawn Ferguson, who prosecuted the case with Lisa Callaghan, said in a written statement. “The auto theft task force and the district attorney’s office are pleased to see that his lifetime of stealing is over.” A jury in state District Judge Everitt Young’s court convicted Nowden on Wednesday on a felony forgery charge for possessing the counterfeit bills, then took up the issue of punishment.

Nowden had faced up to life in prison because of prior convictions and two pending felony theft cases. He will be eligible for parole after 15 years, when he’s 63. Nowden had maintained that he was innocent of the forgery charge, saying the bills were given to him when he got change for two $100 bills at a gas station. He said prosecutors “railroaded” him on the forgery charge to avoid taking him to trial on the more complicated cases.

But he said after the guilty verdict that he was resigned to the outcome. He said the pending theft cases from 2007 and another arrest in July had made him a target for investigators. “I’m glad it’s over with,” he said. “This has been going on for four years. They would never take me to trial. They were harassing me. They were harassing my family. People I care about wouldn’t come around any more because they were harassing them.”