Palwasha Shir

Introduction

Palwasha Shir is a 36-year-old Maryland woman, formerly of Westbrook, Maine, who used a small business she owned as the vehicle for a counterfeit-check scheme against a Maine credit union. According to federal court records, Shir caused two counterfeit U.S. Treasury checks — one for $291,203 and one for $193,107 — to be deposited into a business account she controlled, passing off government refunds that belonged to other entities as income for her own company. She pleaded guilty on June 23, 2026, to aiding and abetting the presentation of a counterfeit government check, and a federal judge in Portland sentenced her to two years in prison plus three years of supervised release and nearly $300,000 in restitution.

Background Information

Shir was the sole owner of The Selfie Room LLC, a business she registered in the state of Maine. Through the LLC she opened a checking account at a credit union in Maine, and that account became the destination for both counterfeit deposits. Beyond her ownership of the studio and her residence history — Maryland at the time of sentencing, Westbrook, Maine before that — the public record of her life comes almost entirely from the court filings in her case, which the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine summarized when announcing the sentence. The investigation was handled by IRS Criminal Investigation, the internal enforcement arm of the tax agency whose refund checks her deposits mimicked.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Palwasha Shir pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the presentation of counterfeit Treasury checks and was sentenced to 24 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and $290,947 in restitution.

The scheme unfolded in the summer of 2024. In July 2024, Shir caused a counterfeit Treasury check made payable to The Selfie Room LLC in the amount of $291,203 to be deposited into the business’s credit union account. In August 2024, a second counterfeit check followed, made payable to the same LLC in the amount of $193,107. The counterfeits were not crude fabrications: the serial numbers and amounts on both checks matched genuine tax refund checks issued by the IRS to entities that had no connection to The Selfie Room and were unrelated to Shir. The forgery lay in the payee and address fields, which were altered so the checks would be payable to her business instead.

The scheme came apart inside the credit union itself. When a representative of the institution called Shir to discuss the suspicious deposits, Shir falsely claimed that she had received the checks from the IRS. That denial did not stop the referral to investigators, and the case moved through federal court until her guilty plea on June 23, 2026. At sentencing, U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock, Jr. imposed 24 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered her to pay $290,947 in restitution — a figure reflecting the loss tied to the counterfeit deposits.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The public record of the case is the government’s own announcement, and its emphasis falls on the mechanics of the fraud rather than on commentary: a sole owner, a business account, two altered government checks, and a false story told to the credit union when it called to ask. The consequences, however, are concrete. Shir was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Portland to two years in federal prison, followed by a supervised-release term that will keep her under federal supervision after custody, and the restitution order converts the scheme’s paper gains into a debt she owes after release. The conviction itself is now a permanent federal record for a woman whose only documented business was the one she used to present the checks.

Current Status

Shir is a sentenced federal defendant. Judge Woodcock’s sentence of 24 months was imposed following her June 23, 2026, guilty plea to aiding and abetting the presentation of a counterfeit government check to her credit union. Restitution of $290,947 was ordered at sentencing, to be paid through the federal system alongside three years of supervised release. The announcement of the sentence came from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine, which credited IRS Criminal Investigation with the investigation. No appeal is reported in the release, and no further charges are noted.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Shir’s case is a closed loop: the only business named in the record, The Selfie Room LLC, is the instrument of the offense, and its account is where both counterfeit checks landed. The conviction removes her from her business and her community for two years, puts her under supervised release for three more, and attaches a restitution obligation that will follow her well beyond custody. For the credit union, the case documents the kind of counterfeit-Treasury deposit that institutions are trained to catch; for Shir, the paper trail of altered payee lines and mismatched genuine-refund serial numbers became the record that ended her business ownership and sent her to federal prison at 36.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Maine, “Maryland Woman Sentenced for Aiding and Abetting Deposit of Counterfeit Treasury Check,” November 2026. source