Anchorage woman sentenced to 5 years in federal identity theft scheme

Dusty Starr of Anchorage was sentenced Tuesday to five years in federal prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The sentence will be followed by five years of supervised release, a period of court supervision in the community after prison. The court also ordered her to pay restitution to her victims.

Starr, 48, held more than 170 identities stolen from mail, vehicles and individuals, according to court documents. The scheme ran from February 2021 to February 2022, and prosecutors estimated losses at more than $71,000.

Much of the scheme centered on an Alaska state agency that provides rental assistance and helped distribute rent relief with charitable organizations during the pandemic, prosecutors said. Posing as several different landlords and tenants, Starr used stolen identities to file nine fraudulent applications. The agency paid $47,550 into accounts she had opened under stolen names.

Starr also forged checks on the accounts of several Alaska Native corporations, prosecutors said. She used account information from legitimate checks stolen from the mail and check-printing equipment she bought from Amazon, then deposited the forged checks into accounts opened with stolen identities. Losses to the corporations total more than $24,000.

With the stolen identities, she also set up email, bank and money-transfer accounts and sham businesses to impersonate victims and route money into accounts she controlled, prosecutors said.

Federal prosecutors announced her indictment and arrest earlier this year on three counts each of wire fraud, bank fraud and aggravated identity theft, plus two counts of possession of stolen mail. At the time, prosecutors said each aggravated identity theft count carried a mandatory minimum of two years in prison. Starr pleaded guilty in June under a plea agreement.

"Our office will continue to prioritize pursuing abuses of pandemic relief and to protect the sanctity of the U.S. Postal Service critical to so many Alaskans," Michael J. Heyman, U.S. Attorney for the District of Alaska, said in a release Tuesday.

Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said fraud detective Tiffani Loughman spent years on the case.

"Theft can be financially devastating for victims, and the effects can last long after the crime," Case said.