STILLWATER — For more than seven years, Dianne Powers was sought on allegations that she opened a checking account at Stillwater National Bank — using another woman’s name and social security number — and illegally got cash from the account at ATMs.
Powers, 49, who now resides in Stillwater as she did in 2000, evaded capture on those old charges, while living and working in California for years — until she took a cruise and was arrested on Payne County warrants as she came through customs last fall.
After Powers was picked up by the Payne County Sheriff’s Office in Galveston, Texas, she was jailed here for almost a month — until she pleaded guilty to one count of identity theft and seven counts of computer fraud, all occurring in Stillwater in March 2000.
She also pleaded guilty to displaying a fake identification card to a Stillwater police officer and assault and battery of a woman in Stillwater, both occurring in May 2000.
In Payne County District Court Friday, Powers was placed on five years’ probation and ordered to pay nearly $6,000 restitution — $1,226 for the Stillwater bank’s losses and $4,761 for the woman’s injuries.
Powers was also ordered to perform 100 hours of community service within one year and pay $200 in fines.
According to a background report compiled for Payne County Special District Judge Phillip Corley, Powers said that she was arrested at age 46 in Oakland, Cal., and charged with computer fraud there. She said she served 152 days in jail there, as part of her sentence.
Powers said that she has been living in Stillwater again since May 2007, court documents show.
She said that she is on a leave of absence from being a certified nursing assistant in home support service for Alameda County, Cal., where she worked six and one-half years, court records show. She previously used the surnames of Richardson and Reid, court records show.
According to an affidavit by Stillwater Police Detective David Grussing, the identity theft, on which Powers was sentenced last week, came to light when a Tulsa woman drove to the Stillwater Police Station in June 2000 to report that somone had opened a checking account in her name at Stillwater National Bank.
The woman — who said she never had an account there and had not even been in Stillwater since 1980 — learned that someone was using her identity when the Payne County District Attorney’s Office sent her a letter in May 2000 that a bogus check had been written on her account in March 2000 at a Stillwater grocery store, the affidavit said.
When the detective saw a photocopy of a driver’s license used at the bank to open the checking account, he recognized that the photo belonged to Powers — even though the name, address and driver’s license number belonged to the identity theft victim, the affidavit said.
