Repeat identity thief gets eight-year term.

Byline: Rebecca Nolan The Register-Guard

A prolific identity thief who was arrested less than two years after his release from prison for similar crimes soon will be back in state custody, this time for more than eight years.

A Lane County Circuit Court judge on Monday sentenced Everett Eugene Proctor Jr. to eight years, eight months in prison after his conviction for 15 counts of identity theft and one count each of computer fraud and felony theft.

Proctor, 27, of Creswell, had been out of prison for about 16 months when Springfield police pulled him over Aug. 10 and found evidence of identity theft in his car.

Police found a wallet with an identification card bearing Proctor's photo and someone else's name. Proctor allowed police to search his belongings, including his computer, which contained more evidence of his crimes, said Eugene police Detective Steve Williams, who examined the computer files for Springfield investigators.

Springfield's investigation turned up evidence that Proctor had used other people's identities to open credit accounts at Target, Macy's and other large retailers.

Williams rated Proctor a nine on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most prolific practitioner of fraud he's ever seen.

The district attorney's office had asked the judge for more than 16 years based on Proctor's past crimes. Proctor's defense attorney, Marcy Butcher, had asked for a sentence of about 5 1/2 years, citing other cases in which defendants with more victims and worse criminal histories received more lenient punishments. Williams said Proctor probably will serve little more than 7 1/2 years.

Proctor has tangled with police before. Springfield police arrested him and several others in December 2000 for a computer-generated check scam. The criminal ring stole people's mail and used their account numbers to create phony checks on the computer, which they then passed at stores such as ShopKo, J.C. Penney, Jerry's, Kmart and Sears.

When police tried to take him into custody in that case, he fought with them, prompting one officer to knee him in the groin. The move ruptured one of Proctor's testicles, which had to be surgically removed.

Proctor sued the city in federal court, and the two parties reached an out-of-court settlement in 2005.

He was convicted of felony theft in 2001 and was sent to prison for more than six years, court records show.

However, he was allowed to participate in an early release program, and was back in the community by April 2005. He was scheduled to be on post-prison supervision until 2009.

Investigators said he had returned his criminal ways by the beginning of 2006.