Twin steals sister's identity
Pulled over by police, she uses sister's name

By Mike Marino
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Identity theft is a growing crime. Recently in Grants, there was an identity theft case involving not complete strangers, but identical twin sisters.

"Basically what happened here is that on May 4, an officer arrested Conicelia Apachito from Alamo last month for driving on the wrong side of the road with kids in the car, and she was drinking. When she got arrested, she used her twin sister's information on the arrest. So technically, the wrong sister was cited in court, so now the other sister is looking at pressing identify theft charges, which is a felony," Lt. Harry Hall of the Cibola County Sheriffs Department said.

When Apachito was stopped, she had no identification, so she gave information about her sister Lanicelia, including her Social Security number, when arrested. Lanicelia, whose identity was stolen, went to the sheriff's department on June 8 after she had received a notice to appear in court.

"So now we have gone from misdemeanor DWI to an identity theft, fourth degree felony. This is one of those cases where people think they can get away with this, but they can't," Hall said.

"We do all we can to help retrieve property that has been stolen, and in the case of identity theft, you're not going to get away with it. Citizens, too, have to help out by taking precautions to not become victims of crime," Hall said.

Hall will be teaching a class on crime prevention and self defense on July 10 at the Cibola County Senior Citizens Center.

To report crimes in the area anonymously, contact Crimestoppers at (505) 287-8400.