Steven Stewart. Bradley Allen. Edward Fleming.
Detectives say a man with ties to Whatcom County has hopped from one of these identities to the next, committing crimes and racking up thousands of dollars of debt that has ruined the lives of the real Stewart, Allen and Fleming.
And Washington State Patrol Detective Erik Noren, who has spent more than a month investigating the case, fears many more have had their lives hijacked by the elusive man.
“We know darn well with identity thieves that if there’s three, there’s probably 30,” Noren said.
Noren has traced the man from Hawaii to Alaska to New Mexico. But the trail turned cold last month in Bellingham.
FIRST KNOWN VICTIM
In 1998, New Mexico resident Steven Stewart was on a fishing trip in Alaska when he lost a fanny pack that contained his fishing license, which at that time listed a Social Security and driver’s license number for out-of-state residents.
About six months later, Stewart, who has owned a towing company since 1976, began receiving letters and phone calls from collection agencies asking about overdue phone bills and loans.
The man used Stewart’s personal information to obtain a valid Washington state driver’s license under Stewart’s name.
As Stewart, the man had purchased two personal watercraft and, in 2001, a new Volvo. While driving the Volvo, the man was involved in a serious crash in Bellevue and racked up thousands of dollars of medical bills while at Overlake Hospital.
All told, Stewart said the man amassed nearly $250,000 in debt under his name, leaving Stewart with the bills.
“It was a nightmare,” Stewart said. “There was a period there where every week someone would call trying to collect something I knew nothing about.”
As the sole proprietor of his business, Stewart said the outstanding debt ruined his credit and made it impossible for him to obtain any loan for new equipment. It wasn’t until last year that Stewart finally cleared his credit report of the last of the past-due bills created by the suspect.
“Even to this day … if I start (a loan application), I might be lucky to be done by June,” Stewart said.
ANOTHER VICTIM STUCK WITH SUSPECT’S LEGAL WOES
Bradley Allen, a North Carolina resident, lost his wallet while in Reno, Nev., in 2003.
Noren said the suspect assumed Allen’s identity, once again translating the personal information he had into a valid driver’s license.
As Allen, the suspect worked construction jobs around Whatcom County, even registering his own company, Bay Construction.
The suspect also had some runins with the law.
He was cited for second-degree assault Jan. 24, 2005, after allegedly ramming a car that was waiting at a railroad crossing near the corner of Bell Road and Portal Way in Blaine during a road-rage incident. The suspect then drove his truck into a field and got stuck in a fence. A portable breath test revealed a blood alcohol level above .10, more than the legal limit, according to charging documents filed in Whatcom County Superior Court.
On Feb. 10, 2007, Whatcom County Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Furdyk arrested the man after seeing him pass a vehicle on a blind corner while traveling approximately 70 mph in a 50 mph zone in the 5400 block of Mount Baker Highway. Furdyk and another vehicle had to brake aggressively to avoid the suspect, who then accelerated in an attempt to lose the officer, according to charging documents.
Furdyk eventually caught up with the suspect and arrested him on suspicion of reckless driving and attempting to elude police.
The man also was cited on Dec. 11, 2007, for first-degree theft of an item worth more than $1,500 in Skagit County.
In all three cases, the suspect did not show up for his court dates, and bench warrants were issued for Bradley Allen.
FAVORS NOT RETURNED
Edward Fleming, a former Whatcom County resident who lives in Oregon and owns a homebuilding company in Maui, said he received a phone call from a Bradley Allen in January 2007.
The suspect said he was responding to Fleming’s advertisement in The Bellingham Herald for construction work. He said he was at the Maui airport and was “here to go to work.”
Though he found it odd that the man hadn’t called ahead before flying to Hawaii, Fleming said he gave him the benefit of the doubt.
“There’s a trusting part of me — that’s just who I am,” Fleming said. “I have 110 employees and I treat them like family.”
With no vacancy in any local hotels, Fleming let the man sleep in an extra bedroom of his home. Fleming said the man spoke of spending time in prison in New York and “started getting weird” when he began drinking — weird enough that Fleming slept with a knife under his bed.
The man’s employment with Fleming lasted all of five or six days. Fleming said the man, who was in his 40s or 50s, didn’t work well because of the heat. The last straw was when the man tried to sell one of Fleming’s company trucks to another local construction company for $7,500 cash.
Noren said the five or six days apparently was all the man needed to obtain enough of Fleming’s personal information to steal his identity when he got back to Washington state.
The man used a valid driver’s license with the name of Edward Fleming to buy a new Chevy flatbed pickup from Sunset Chevrolet in Sumner and to open several credit cards.
Fleming said he regrets being so trusting of the man but refuses to let the experience affect his opinion of other people.
“I’m a country boy from the Meridian area,” Fleming said. “Do I think I was stupid? I know I was stupid. … I’m mad at myself, but I don’t know that I’d change anything. I believe there’s more honest people out there than bad.”
DRIVER’S LICENSE SECURITY NOT FOOLPROOF
In each circumstance, the suspect was able to translate personal information into a valid driver’s license.
Noren said it’s particularly disturbing that the man, who appears to be in his 50s, was able to get a valid driver’s license under Bradley Allen’s name with a birth year of 1978, which would make him 30 years old.
Department of Licensing spokesman Brad Benfield said the suspect would have needed more than just a Social Security number to get the licenses.
Benfield said his department has made many improvements in the past decade to fight identity theft, including asking for proof of residency and cataloging the mug shot of any in-state licensee.
“Now, when someone comes in to renew a license, (the clerk) can compare a picture in the database to the person standing in front of them,” Benfield said.
But Benfield admitted that they have access only to those mug shots for Washington residents. An out-of-state resident getting a license in Washington would not have a photo in the system. As long as that person could produce enough valid documentation, he or she would be issued a new license.
“It’s not foolproof, we’ll acknowledge that,” Benfield said. “If someone is willing to go through all the steps to forge these documents, it certainly can be done. But we’ve gone quite a ways to make it more difficult for them.”
Benfield said the new enhanced driver’s licenses, which are optional to get, allow computer technology to analyze faces and detect if the same person is licensed under two identities. The same analysis can’t legally be done on standard licenses.
Noren said the fact that the suspect had valid identification prevented law enforcement from noticing anything abnormal when they interacted with him as Bradley Allen.
IDENTITY STILL UNKNOWN
Noren, who has tracked the suspect for more than a month, said he always finds himself one step behind the man.
“We have photos, we have fingerprints, but we have no idea who he really is,” Noren said.
The Stewart, Allen and Fleming licenses have been flagged by the Department of Licensing, meaning police would be tipped off if he uses those identities for anything official. Noren said he assumes the cold trail means the man has taken another identity.
In a motion filed in court seeking to change the conditions of his release as Bradley Allen, the suspect said he had been living in Whatcom County approximately 16 years.
The suspect has listed addresses throughout Western Washington, including Arlington, Mount Vernon, Sandy Point, Ferndale, Bellingham and Kendall. Noren said some of the addresses probably are fake, because the man makes a habit of using other peoples’ addresses and phone numbers when filling out paperwork.
The suspect also changes his hair color and physical appearance when switching identities.
Noren has contacted several people in the local construction trade who have employed the man as a subcontractor. All of them knew him under one of the fake identities and said he didn’t stay long.
At one time, the man may have had a wife from the Bellingham area. Noren said the man, working as Steven Stewart in 2001 or 2002, brought his wife to a construction site. One of the employees reportedly knew the wife, as the two had attended high school in Bellingham years before.
Noren said they got a tip in February that the man might be living on Texas Street in Bellingham. Neighbors told Noren that the last time they saw the man was about three weeks earlier, loading his belongings onto a flat-bed truck matching the description of the truck purchased under Fleming’s name.
Noren said he hopes someone in Whatcom County knows the man’s real name or whereabouts, so he can be stopped before stealing yet another identity.
“He’s someone who has just figured out how to get a free ride in life,” Noren said. “This guy just ruins people.”