Fraud 101: if your crime involves using a fake identity, avoid scamming people you already knowFor a guy who helped run a complicated scheme that all told defrauded over 71 victims of an estimated $100,000, Leon Anderson managed to get caught in a particularly dumb way. On May 29, 2008, Anderson and co-conspirator Curtis Craft pulled into a Tacoma gas station. Problem was that Craft was a frequent visitor of said gas station and had written a multitude of checks as payment for his fuel, all of them bad. The gas station attendants recognized Craft as the guy who had been scamming free gas and called the cops. After they were arrested, police found multiple documents linking the pair to a scheme to fleece area banks by wildly abusing the state’s name change system. According to court records, between 2000 and 2008 Anderson changed his name twelve times. Anderson would obtain a driver’s license under a false name, then deposit checks drawn from an account opened under a separate false name in order to inflate the balance. Before the checks could clear, he’d withdraw the cash, rinse, then repeat. Now he’ll join Craft, who last year was sentenced to seven years in prison, as a ward of the federal government. He was sentenced in federal court this morning to 27 months, plus nearly $100,000 in restitution. Given his record, those payments will likely take the form of cash.