Alert Wal-Mart checker leads to ID-theft ring bust

The threesome was buying items often found on a shopping list: toothpaste, Doritos, batteries, flashlights, dog food, Dr Pepper.

Throw in halter tops, a Coleman propane tank and an air ratchet, and the Wal-Mart shopping excursion was becoming more of a spree.

But after a checker became increasingly suspicious about accepting a temporary paper driver’s license as sufficient identification for a $1,000 check, the would-be buyers quickly left their purchases behind.

That was April 17.

Now police are discovering just how solid the checker’s instincts were.

Police tracked a suspect’s vehicle to a Crossland motel room across the street from the Spokane Valley police precinct on East Sprague. When detectives searched the motel room, they discovered a “significant” identity theft ring.

“A low estimate is 750 victims,” said Spokane Valley police Sgt. Dave Martin, who thinks the figure is probably closer to 1,000. “I bet there are hundreds of people who don’t know they are victims or about to be victims.”

Lakotah F. Rangel, 25, was arrested at the motel on Friday. A second suspect, Vicki D. Nance, 44, remains at large, and police are asking for the public’s assistance in finding her.

“She’s significant,” Martin said.

A third suspect has not been identified.

After the attempted shopping spree at the East Broadway Wal-Mart, detectives collected the forged check and fake identification. The alert clerk provided a detailed description of the suspects and their car.

A Spokane Valley detective began staking out motels for a dark-colored 1980s Chevy El Camino. When one turned up at the Crossland motel, police found the room the car was associated with was registered under Rangel’s name. The Spokane man had an outstanding warrant for escape from community custody.

Rangel came out of the room to smoke a cigarette, and “I told him to get on the ground,” Detective Kirk Keyser said Tuesday.

“He was surprised … shocked,” Keyser said. Rangel was arrested on suspicion of second-degree identity theft because police allegedly found a temporary counterfeit driver’s license and stolen checks on him.

“We found an obvious, organized identity theft ring inside (the room),” Keyser said.

Police described the operation as tidy and extremely organized.

If Nance had used her talents for good, she could have made some employer happy, said Spokane Valley Police Chief Cal Walker, as detectives explained the seized items displayed on six 12-foot long tables.

Among the items were Social Security cards, fingerprint cards, credit cards, birth certificates, store receipts, stolen and counterfeit checks, computer equipment used to make checks, original and counterfeit driver’s licenses.

Numerous identifications with other people’s names and Nance’s photograph also were found.

One of the pieces of mail was a document of an investment account with more than $225,000 in it. Another item detectives found was an entire joint tax return filed by a husband and wife, who work as a doctor and an attorney.

“It’s time we do away with rural mailboxes,” Martin said. About 25 percent of the documents were stolen from the mail, he said.

The other way the suspects may have obtained information was from Dumpsters where businesses and financial establishments discarded items containing personal information, officials said.

Nance was nabbed last July in Liberty Lake. An officer found boxes and bags of mail from ZIP codes stretching from Cheney to Post Falls in the trunk of the car she was driving. She was charged with possession of a controlled substance, financial fraud and possession of stolen property in the second degree.

Rangel admitted to investigators that he and Nance have a methamphetamine addiction, but no drugs were found in the motel room.

The police said calling people whose names were on seized evidence to tell them to check their credit will take time.