Last week, a woman was stopped for a routine traffic check when it was found that she might be a part of an identity theft ring. Charges against her includes several counts of identity theft, forging a driver license with intent to commit a crime and more. Each of the charges against her are felonies that could result in five years each. One felony could be four years.

Her identity is 25-year old, Heather Bailey, of Kentucky. She has two children and is five months pregnant with her third and facing many years behind bars. Bailey is being held on $200,000 bond. Bailey was arrested with one of the victim’s identification on her and was found to have been using that identity for the past few months, including making purchases in the victim’s name.

Police have been able to track around $40,000 in charges that Bailey has spent in the names of her victims. This number is expected to significantly increase by the time they are done tracing all of her spending.

When Bailey was first arrested, she was released after having convinced officers that she was one of her victims. However, police impounded the vehicle and found fraudulent checks when searching the vehicle. The checks had real routing numbers and non-existent bank account numbers. The purchases tracked to Bailey have been made from Lansing to Toledo, Ohio.

The victim has been notified of Bailey’s arrest and is “ecstatic” that she has been caught. In the meantime, the victim has had to deal with daily phone calls for collection on accounts never opened by her. She will spend a lot of time trying to undo what was done to her. She has provided police with a file that contains information relating to fraud committed in her name and the file is reported to be 3 inches thick.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 8:39 am and is filed under Articles Concerning Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.