The bust of a check forger in Sonoma, tackled by police after a brief chase through the Safeway parking lot, has lead to the arrest of the kingpin of an identity-theft ring.
The smaller fish, Brian Fuesz, 45, of Santa Rosa, was arrested December 11 by Sonoma police who found in his car a folder with dozens of bogus California drivers licenses and checks that, while fake, were in the names of real people.
The case was turned over to multi-agency Northern California Computer Crimes Task Force. The unit’s David Chapman said information in the Fuesz material pointed to Brad William Hesse, a 49-year-old Castro Valley man already wanted for identity theft in four other jurisdictions.
There is as yet no known connection to Hesse and the rash of check forgeries that plagued Sonoma for several months this spring. Chapman did rule out a connection to the information theft from ATM terminals at Mary’s Pizza Shack. “It’s unrelated,” he said. Most of the names in that case were sold to criminals overseas, he said.
In early July, Hesse was tracked to a Sacramento hotel. “He was gone, but his belongings were still there,” Chapman said. The cache included equipment for fabricating checks, counterfeit drivers licenses and magnetic strips, and papers and inks to recreate government checks.
A substantial database of ID information on hundreds of thousands of individuals was also found, Chapman said. The investigation continues on how that list, which has no overt source or pattern, was amassed.
Chapman said there could have been a breach of one or more computer networks. Or, suggested by the hundreds of pieces of stolen mail found in the hotel room, Hesse could have built the list by stealing mail and property that contained personal information.
Five other suspects in the case are at large. Chapman said Hesse would make checks and IDs for associates, who would give him a cut of the resulting cash, or simply sell the material outright or use it himself.
The bulk of the check forgeries happened in Northern California, Chapman said, the Bay Area, Central Valley and up to Reno.
Fuesz, the local scam artist, was convicted in June of forgery, possessing identification information with the intent to defraud, possessing counterfeiting equipment and methamphetamine possession.
