If Calvin Chad Sharp tried posing as Powell resident Amy Moore at a store, he likely wouldn’t have gotten very far. But on the Internet, no one knows you’re a tattooed man with a lengthy criminal past and not a minivan-driving mother.

Sharp, of the Salt Lake City area, recently was sentenced to four to six years in prison for stealing and using Moore’s identity to make thousands of dollars of purchases over the span of more than a year. When Sharp gets out, he’ll have three years of supervised probation to serve.

Identity theft is a difficult crime to solve, but Sharp was nabbed in part because of the diligence of the Powell Police Department and former investigator Mike Hall, who traveled to Utah to close out the case.

“Really, we took a pretty big identity thief down,” Hall said recently. “He was doing this to a lot of people.”

A good name dirtied

Moore began noticing things were amiss in late 2012. She’d come to learn her personal information — including her Social Security number — had been used to apply for 10 different lines of credit.

Several months later, Moore got a $858.38 bill from Fingerhut, an online “buy now, pay later” retailer she’d never heard of.

“I don’t know what it is, but apparently you can order a lot of things from there for a lot of money,” Moore said.

Fingerhut billed her for a three-piece set of carry-on luggage, a home safe, an all-in-one printer, a man’s watch, a tablet computer and a workstation for a laptop — all things she hadn’t ordered.

She later obtained a copy of her credit report “and was astounded at how many things had been opened in my name.”

Many attempted transactions were voided, but some orders went through.

Moore said she and her husband always had great credit and suddenly she was getting weekly phone calls from revolving credit companies.

“A little bit of security is taken away from you,” she said. “Somebody is impersonating you and using your good name and dragging it through the credit score dirt, so to speak.”

Trying to restore her good name proved frustrating.

“I guess the burden of proof was on me to prove I truly wasn’t the one going on numerous shopping sprees,” Moore said.

When Fingerhut referred her to law enforcement, she started with police in West Jordan, Utah, where the packages were shipped.

“They just said, ‘(Well), we can’t do anything about that. Since you’re the victim, it would have to be your own police department,’” Moore recalled. “I thought I was getting the run-around and basically they don’t care.”

A difficult crime

Identity theft is difficult to solve, and it’s common — Javelin Strategy & Research estimates that 12.7 million Americans lost $16 billion to identity fraud last year.

In a decade-old study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, researchers Stuart Allison, Amie Schuck and Kim Lersch examined the crime in Florida and concluded only around 11 percent of cases resulted in an arrest. Online businesses that offer identity protection services claim the arrest rate is around 5 percent — meaning only 1 of 20 cases gets solved.

Not only can the financial transactions be complex, thieves can commit the crime from anywhere in the world.

“That’s the tough part with those cases, is the names and addresses and stuff rarely leads back to the person,” officer Hall said.

Hall dove into Moore’s case and came to find the police in Utah weren’t uninterested, just lacking the resources.

“There’s so much of it (financial crime) down there that they’re just not able to pick one and run with it like that,” Hall said. “This was one out of just a few (in Powell) and really ... it was the one that I thought, if we put the time into it, I thought we could get somewhere with it.”

What gave him hope was that the perpetuator appeared to be in Utah, and not some foreign country.

“It was just a matter of exhausting everything,” Hall said. “Even if I hit nothing but dead ends, I wanted to exhaust everything so I could be able to say to Amy (Moore), ‘We tried everything.’”

Fortunately, there weren’t many dead ends.

The catch

Charging documents say Sharp was caught because he became sloppy in the way he used Moore’s information between December 2012 and January 2014.

By pulling a vast amount of sales records, Hall learned most of the orders in Moore’s name were supposed to ship to Sharp’s parents’ home in West Jordan, and an early order used a phone number associated with Sharp.

The officer discovered that shortly after one of Sharp’s friend’s wrote on his Facebook timeline, “Hey I need a phone homie,” Moore’s information was used to activate a new line with Verizon. In fact, between December 2012 and March 2013, Sharp opened five phone numbers in Moore’s name and wracked up more than $2,000 in charges, court documents say.

The most damning evidence came in January 2014, when Sharp tried using Moore’s information to buy a $842.26, one-carat diamond engagement ring from Walmart.com. This time, charging documents say he used his real name, asking it be shipped to “Chad Sharp.”

That and other evidence was enough for the Park County Attorney’s Office to file 20 felony forgery charges — each relating to a different time Sharp tried using Moore’s personal information.

Hall got the West Jordan Police to arrange for Sharp’s arrest, then received permission from Police Chief Roy Eckerdt and City Administrator Zane Logan to travel to Utah to participate in the arrest and interview.

Sharp ended up giving a full confession — not only to misusing Moore’s information, but to others’ as well, Hall said.

The officer said Sharp got the personal data from several sources: Moore’s came from stolen medical records (she had previously lived in Utah), some people’s came from checkbooks and IDs stolen by associates of Sharp and other information came from a former pharmacy employee who still had online access to the Utah facility’s records.

“It was really this twisted kind of web that he (Sharp) had spun, and thankfully he kind of got careless and out of control with it,” Hall said.

Convicted

Sharp was extradited to Wyoming in March 2014. At his first appearance in Park County Circuit Court, Sharp conceded a lengthy criminal history made of mostly similar fraud charges, but argued he should be released on bond to begin paying back what he owed.

Circuit Court Judge Bruce Waters, however, noted the potential prison time and set bond at the $20,000 cash figure recommended by the prosecution.

“While these don’t involve crimes of violence, are they the types of crimes that affect individuals’ lives quite severely and quite seriously? They do,” Waters said.

Sharp soon pleaded guilty to eight of the forgery counts and was released to go work at a Utah tattoo shop.

However, after returning to the Salt Lake area, Sharp was arrested on some of the other allegations of fraud. After serving months in jail, he was returned to Park County in December.

Sharp ultimately accepted the four- to six-year prison sentence here, but told District Court Judge Steven Cranfill he didn’t agree with the punishment “at all.”

After saying sorry to Moore, Sharp said he didn’t understand why he couldn’t be released on probation to pay back what he owed in a matter of months rather than years.

“I really don’t think prison’s the answer; however, I mean, there’s nothing I can do about it now,” Sharp said. “I committed a crime, I’ve got to pay the punishment, I understand that.”

The 34-year-old said he’d already spent more than 11 years behind bars and suggested he instead get a lengthy suspended prison sentence that would be imposed if he didn’t make regular payments.

Judge Cranfill confirmed with Moore that she wanted to proceed, then sentenced Sharp to the negotiated prison time.

“Certainly, we’d like to see the victim get restitution back sooner than later, but given his history, we weren’t going to put him back on the streets to do harm to some other member of the public,” Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Tim Blatt said after the hearing.

Sharp was ordered to repay Moore for 18 months of credit monitoring services, repay $2,043.21 to merchants like Fingerhut and the Home Shopping Network that absorbed fraudulent charges, $2,085.69 to the Park County Sheriff’s Office for transportation and $1,435 in court fees and assessments.

‘It happens all the time’

Moore doesn’t know if her ordeal is over or if someone else has or will get her personal information. With her credit being monitored, many of her purchases result in phone calls, checking to make sure it was actually her.

“I’ve traded that freedom for that supervision that I need at this point,” she said.

Still, Moore thinks things could have been worse and is glad that Sharp is behind bars.

“I feel fortunate that he (Sharp) got a taste of Wyoming justice,” she said. “It kind of feels good to know that the judicial system has your back ... if you’re a victim of something like that.”

She praised the Powell Police Department and Hall’s “tenacity” in pursuing the case.

“I really appreciate what he did,” she said.

Hall, who now works as an officer in Michigan, sounds a cautionary note about the lessons from the case.

“When he (Sharp) would buy this information from this pharmacist (in Utah), it was $10 for your identity,” he said. “That’s what your identity cost him, was $10.”

He suggested being careful with who you entrust with your personal information.

“People don’t think it can happen to them. People don’t think it can happen there,” Hall said. “But the reality is, it happens all the time.”