By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A woman arrested in a Stillwater hotel room — where three handwritten ledgers with about 150 individual credit/debit/checking numbers were found — has been given three concurrent five-year prison terms for three counts of identity theft.
Tara Colleen Holden, 50, of Oklahoma City, pleaded guilty last week to those felony counts as well as misdemeanor counts of possessing methamphetamine and a charging port station stolen from another Stillwater hotel.
Holden was also ordered to pay $619 in total restitution plus $600 in fines for the felonies by Associate District Judge Stephen Kistler, who gave her concurrent six-month and one-year jail terms for her misdemeanors as part of a plea agreement with the prosecution.
The hotel room — that she had rented under another woman’s name — contained that woman’s wallet with her driver’s license, four homemade fraudulent credit cards in the identity theft victim’s name, two printers, a black laptop, a stack of blank check paper, sheets of laminate, sheets of “rub on letters & numbers” in various fonts, Exacto knives, adhesive laminate in the trash with messed-up information, a gram of methamphetamine and a charging port station from another hotel, along with the three ledgers, an affidavit said.
Holden was arrested on June 3 by Stillwater Police Officer Brett Moore, who wrote in an affidavit that in the previous two weeks he had been assisting Payne County Sheriff’s Deputy Dan Nack “with an ongoing investigation regarding an identity theft ring being conducted within the Stillwater area.”
“This ring involved the theft of identities, making of fraudulent debit/credit cards using said identities, and printing and passing fraudulent checks using said identities. We received information of numerous individuals involved in this scheme to include Tara Holden,” the Stillwater officer wrote in his affidavit.
“On Monday, June 3, 2019, we received information Tara was staying at the Hampton Inn located at 717 E. Hall of Fame. Deputy Nack and I responded to the location and discovered Tara had checked out of the hotel on Friday, May 31, 2019,” the Stillwater officer wrote in his affidavit. The hotel manager said she had used another woman’s name to check into the room, which she refused to vacate after checkout time, the affidavit said. “They later discovered she had stolen a charging port station from the room,” the affidavit said.
“After leaving the Hampton Inn, Deputy Nack and I responded to Home2 Suites located at 306 E. Hall of Fame where we had previously found the group renting rooms,” the Stillwater officer wrote in his affidavit. Holden had rented a room there under the same identity theft victim’s name that she had used at the Hampton Inn, the affidavit said.
Holden was arrested on an outstanding warrant from another county, the affidavit said. “Tara denied making any credit cards or checks inside the room; however, (she) stated the ID and credit cards for (the identity theft victim) would be located inside the room. Tara also stated two printers, a laptop and check paper would also be in the room,” which were found when a search warrant was served in that room, the affidavit said.
A ledger in the room contained names, dates of birth, social security numbers, addresses and other personal information for several individuals including a Tulsa man, a Stroud woman and a Newkirk woman, the affidavit said.
According to court records, Holden had previously been placed on three years’ probation in Oklahoma County for falsely personating another in Bethany in 2017 and felony shoplifting in Oklahoma City in 2016.
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