Man arrested at Carson City hotel on suspicion of identity theft

A man was arrested Wednesday at a hotel in the 2700 block of South Carson Street for allegedly stealing people’s identities and creating fake IDs.

According to a Carson City Sheriff’s Office arrest report:

A deputy was dispatched to the hotel about 5:55 p.m. to help the Colorado Springs Police Department with an identity-theft investigation. The hotel’s front desk clerk said a man staying there was using a fraudulent or stolen credit card to pay for his room.

An officer in Colorado Springs said he was investigating the man for allegedly opening various credit cards using a victim’s name. The Carson deputy went to the room, and the man identified himself as Scott Westman.

The front desk clerk said a woman in another room had been about $10 short of being able to pay for her room the previous night, and that Westman had offered to pay her balance so she could re-book. The woman said she saw Westman hand the clerk a Cabela’s VISA card.

The deputy determined that Westman had opened the Cabela’s card under a fraudulent name and arrested him. On the way to jail, the deputy obtained a search warrant via phone for Westman’s hotel room.

The deputy and a partner later searched the room, finding card-lamination equipment, a printer, an envelope containing various ID cards, Passport pages, driver’s license templates, a tablet computer, two laptop computers, four hard drives and a metal container with a green, leafy substance resembling marijuana.

The deputy called dispatch and confirmed that the names on the ID cards belonged to real people. All did; some of the people had warrants for their arrests for fraud.

Westman, 43, was arrested on suspicion of felony obtain/use false ID of another, felony uttering a forged instrument, felony fraudulent use of a credit card, possession of false identification, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Bail was set at $25,000.

He remained at the Carson City Jail on Thursday afternoon.