Charges: Woman mailed fake docs from home in bid to clear DUIs

Chris Klint

An Anchorage woman whose driver’s license was permanently revoked due to DUI convictions faces forgery charges, after she allegedly mailed state officials fake court documents exonerating her from her home address.

An Alaska State Troopers dispatch issued Monday said that Kara Hayden, 49, was indicted by a grand jury last week on two counts of second-degree forgery.

A Superior Court judge issued an arrest warrant for her, and she was taken into custody at her home Monday.

Lisa Kelley, an assistant attorney general with the Office of Special Prosecutions handling the case, said in a bail memorandum filed Thursday that Hayden’s license was revoked after five convictions for DUI, the most recent a felony case in July 2011. In both March and April of 2014, however, the state Department of Motor Vehicles received “documents that purported to be dismissals of criminal convictions.”

“Generally, the DMV receives court documents directly from the court that handled the case,” Kelley wrote. “The two documents in question arrived at the DMV in envelopes with the return address of Kara Hayden.”

According to Kelley, Hayden also included a personal appeal with the forged documents.

“The envelopes with the purported dismissals contained a letter from Hayden asking the DMV how she could go about getting her driver’s license reinstated,” Hayden wrote. “The second of these letters specifically referenced the dismissal document that accompanied the letter.”

The DMV contacted the Alaska Court System to request copies of the documents, but were told none existed in Hayden’s file. Kelley said members of the Alaska Bureau of Investigation were subsequently called to examine the documents, determining that they had been forged.

“In the course of the investigation, ABI obtained a search warrant for Hayden’s home, where they found paper copies of various versions of the questioned documents in her home office,” Kelley wrote. “Additionally, Hayden’s computer was found to contain files with the specific wording that had been used to create the documents.”

The quality of the forgeries was poor enough that they wouldn’t have passed for real at a glance, Kelley said Thursday morning.

“The DMV did not think so when they got them, so that’s why they called for copies,” Kelley said.

At the time of her arrest, Hayden didn’t confirm to officers that she had mailed the forged documents to DMV.

“She in fact didn’t actually make any statements to the officers regarding how they got there,” Kelley said. “I would say that the investigation would show that’s how they got there, but I don’t know how she would argue at trial.”

Kelley said the overall sentencing range on each of the forgery charges is zero to five years, but Hayden’s previous felony conviction means she faces a higher minimum sentence on them if she’s convicted.

“She’s presumptively two to four years on this,” Kelley said.

Hayden was initially held at the Anchorage Jail on $1,000 bail. She is scheduled to appear in a bail hearing next week, according to Kelley.

Source: ktuu