Identity thief faces familiar charges

Stacey Lee Fetch cried at her sentencing two years ago, saying she was sorry for defrauding dozens of people through her identity-theft schemes.

“I fully accept responsibility for my past actions,” Fetch told Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor. “I lost all concept of reality about what life is about.”

But not only is Fetch out of prison after serving less than a third of her judge-imposed prison sentence, she’s been arrested on new charges accusing her of doing the same thing.

Fetch, 42, who once forged 11 checks by changing her name to “Retch,” is a perfect example of a bad state law that automatically cuts property crime sentences in half, said Spokane County sheriff’s Detective Steve Barbieri.

“When the state does that, it transfers the cost of incarceration on the state level to where we are spending money to investigate them and prosecute them on the local level,” Barbieri said. “All they are doing is shifting the cost to us.”

As part of her guilty plea to 21 felonies in 2004, prosecutors agreed to waive another 98 felonies against Fetch because she wouldn’t have gotten any more prison time. But the agreement allowed the state to pursue restitution for the victims in those uncharged cases, Barbieri said.

O’Connor didn’t hold back when she handed down her sentence on Feb. 25, 2004.

“You really cut a wide swath in the community,” O’Connor told Fetch at the time. “You owe the community time for what you did.”

O’Connor sentenced Fetch to serve almost six years in prison. But Fetch got a year off for time served and the state law automatically cut that sentence in half as a way to reduce the state’s prison overcrowding problem.

Fetch was released after 15 months.

Then earlier this month, Barbieri was reading police reports when he came across Fetch’s name.

“It’s not like we were watching her,” Barbieri said. “But I have to be honest. When I saw her name on the report, I said, ‘We are going after her.’ ”

The latest case began when Fetch’s landlord called detectives this fall after he applied for a credit card but it never came in the mail. However, the card was activated and someone was purchasing items without his knowledge or permission, according to court records.

The landlord told investigators that he confronted Fetch’s roommate, Eric Parks, 34, and was told that Parks and Fetch “were hungry and broke and (Fetch) made some checks on her computer,” according to court records.

On Nov. 2, sheriff’s deputies raided Fetch’s home at 205 S. Park Road, No. 73, and found computer software, drug paraphernalia, methamphetamine, a Canon printer and a Hewlett-Packard copier, according to court records.

Detective Michael Zollars also obtained video and still photos that show a person who appears to be Fetch using a stolen Visa to purchase gasoline. During a search of Fetch’s home, Zollars found a Washington driver’s license with the fictitious name of Stacey Holms.

Zollars later obtained a surveillance video from Big 5 Sporting Goods showing Fetch on Sept. 18 purchasing shoes using a check by the name of Stacey Holms. Those New Balance shoes were discovered during the November search, according to court records.

Based on that evidence and interviews, detectives charged Fetch with two counts of second-degree identity theft, two counts of forgery, second-degree possession of stolen property and possession of a controlled substance. She appeared in court last week and continues to be held on a $30,000 bond.

“We laid the groundwork for her to succeed when she got out,” Barbieri said. “But when she didn’t, we feel it’s our duty to the community to prosecute her … and make sure we work with the prosecutor to get a sentence to fit the type of criminal that she is.”

During the search of Fetch’s home in 2003, detectives found a list of more than 50 names and bank accounts. Notes kept in a black leather case indicated how many checks she’d written on certain accounts and how much money remained in the “good” accounts, authorities said at the time.

One victim’s name and bank account was used 82 times, according to previous reports.

Fetch, who also goes by Stacey Lee Ray and Stacey Lee Foster, wrote notations with account numbers from 20 businesses, including Spokane Chrysler-Plymouth, Hicks Hardware, Trent Hair Salon and even Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 3386. She declined a request Friday for a jailhouse interview.

After being released from prison last year, Fetch briefly had a job but quickly returned to her old tricks, Barbieri said. Because of the previous case, Barbieri said, the prosecutor hopes to seek an exceptional sentence on the new charges.

For instance, the prosecutor will ask a judge to sentence Fetch to serve all the sentences consecutively. That would extend her sentence from a maximum of about 43 months to more than 10 years in prison, Barbieri said.

“We give these people a chance to get out and correct their bad habits,” Barbieri said. “If they don’t choose to, we don’t have any sympathy the next time around.”