Erik Lea found himself in a world of trouble, only it wasn't Erik Lea who got himself there.

Not entirely, at least.

On Sept. 23, the 28-year-old Albuquerque man was arrested after having a heated argument with his girlfriend over his coming home late. No one was physically harmed, but it was a troubling scene nevertheless.

That's bad enough. But days after he was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center, a routine records check uncovered an outstanding warrant for his arrest on 2005 narcotics charges on which he had skipped out. As a result of the warrant, his bail shot from $5,000 to $20,000 cash only, a guarantee that he wouldn't be free anytime soon.

Only the warrant wasn't his.

The trouble, it turns out, began not at the point of Lea's arrest but in 2002 when he left his wallet in a phone booth. Lea believes someone took his Social Security card from the wallet and used it to claim Lea's information as his own — a handy thing when committing traffic citations and criminal charges.

Identity theft of this kind ruins not just a good credit rating but forces otherwise law-abiding citizens to helplessly suffer the criminal consequences of those who do wrong in their name.

That can include jail time.

Though no statistics are kept on how often this problem occurs, those in the local criminal justice system say they're seeing it often and more frequently.

"It's becoming more and more prevalent, and it's become a problem for us to sort out," said Metro Court Judge Clyde DeMersseman, who estimates that he sees identity theft issues crop up in his courtroom an average of three times a week.

"We've taken some steps to help, but there's not a lot we can do."

Those in the local criminal justice system say there is no easy fix, and even if the wronged person rectifies the identity issue in one case the problem might very well resurface years later.

"Unfortunately, people can be victims for years to come despite anything we try," said Capt. Heather Lough of the Metropolitan Detention Center. "Either way, it's very disturbing and life-altering to the victim."

In Lea's case, having his identity stolen cost him six scary days in jail before he could get anyone in authority to listen to him.

"I was stuck in limbo," he said. "I had no contact with the outside world."

It also cost him his job, his house, likely his truck and his peace of mind.

He can blame that on a man he has never met. That man's real name, according to court records, is Daniel Garcia-Melero.

That man's name, according to court records, is also Erik Lea.

Really Lea?

It wasn't the first time Lea was accused of transgressions he hadn't committed.

In September 2003, he was involved in a minor collision and had to wait for Albuquerque police to arrive to fill out an incident report. He was surprised by what happened next.

"The cops show up, ran my license, cuffed me and stuffed me in the back of their squad car like I'm a criminal, and I'm saying, `Did I do something wrong?' " Lea said.

He hadn't, save for making a bad turn. But Albuquerque police at the scene performed the required records check and found that an Erik Lea with the same social security number and date of birth had been charged with drunken driving four months before. That Lea had failed to appear in court to answer for the charges days later and a warrant for his arrest had been issued.

A closer look at those records, though, would have shown authorities that this Lea had also resided in Durango, Mexico, for 20 years and had no community ties — neither of which were true in the real Lea's case.

This Lea also did not have the hazel eyes, the facial features and the larger build that the real Lea possessed.

Lea — the real one — was able to convince then-Metro Court Judge Denise Barela Shepherd that police had arrested the wrong man. Three days later, the charges were dropped and the records were marked "wrong defendant."

Lea was a free man. But so was his identity thief.

Lea hadn't known then that his name was now being attached as an alias to Garcia-Melero's name, and vice versa.

Lea hadn't known that his thief, believed to be Garcia-Melero, was just getting started.

The error of the alias

Members of the U.S. Marshals Service and the state Probation and Parole Division descended April 5, 2005, on an apartment at 1802 Alvarado St. N.E. in search of a suspect wanted on charges involving dangerous narcotics.

They didn't find him, but they did uncover a large amount of crack cocaine wrapped in small bags and bundled in one large plastic bag inside a locked bedroom.

The bedroom, according to an Metro Court criminal complaint, belonged to Daniel Garcia-Melero.

The 25-year-old part-time construction worker from Mexico was indicted on felony trafficking charges on July 20, 2005. Two days later, he posted a $10,000 surety bond through the Gerald Madrid Bail Bonds.

It was the last time the state criminal justice system had contact with him.

According to court records, a warrant was issued for Garcia-Melero's arrest on Aug. 5, 2005. He also forfeited his bond.

There it stood until this September when Lea, the man whose identity Garcia-Melero had used before in the 2003 DWI, was arrested on the domestic violence charge.

Lea made his appearance in Metro Court a day after his arrest and said he expected to be out of jail within a day or two.

But later that day he learned that Garcia-Melero's warrant, which now bore his name as an alias, had been connected to him and that as a result higher bail was imposed.

"I didn't know what happened. I couldn't believe it," Lea said. "I thought I had cleared that whole identity theft up. I never thought it would come back."

With no further court appearances scheduled right away and little opportunity to make things right outside of jail, Lea had no other choice but to bide his time in the crowded, uncomfortable Metropolitan Detention Center.

For six days he languished in a place he said has too many gang members, too many illicit drugs and too few corrections officers.

He slept on a sandwich-thin mattress on the cold concrete floor with a malfunctioning air conditioner blowing on his head.

He lost nine pounds eating the meager, sometimes unidentifiable, jail food, he said.

"They don't feed you a lot," he said. "They feed you enough to keep you alive."

Lea said he repeatedly asked corrections officers to help him make a phone call to his lawyer, friends, somebody who could set the record straight and have him released.

It would have been easy, he contends, for an officer to double check the warrant, compare mugshots, note the previous cases he had been cleared of because of identity theft.

The officers were not interested.

"Basically, when you're in there you're guilty until proven innocent," Lea said.

MDC's Lough said she understands the corrections officers' reluctance.

"It's the most common thing they hear: `It wasn't me; I didn't do it; You got the wrong person,' " she said. "Everyone has that excuse."

Lough said that while jail personnel make efforts to verify identities by referring to fingerprint numbers, aliases, descriptions and mug shots, it's a daunting task for a system that processed nearly 40,000 bookings last year.

Jail officials also cannot alter the information presented by law enforcement officers, the courts or the National Crime Information Center, Lough said.

"We try to help the individual as best we can, but if there is a mistake in the booking information because of identity theft, there is no real way we at the jail can change that," she said. "Our system is strictly internal."

Even if jail workers find that a person being booked likely isn't the correct person, it's still up to a judge to sort out who's who, she said.

Five days after his arrest, Lea found a receptive officer.

"We called my lawyer, got the case numbers, looked at the mug shots," he said. "It took about five minutes to clear up."

Lea was released on the lower bond the next day. He remains grateful to friends who helped post his bail and the corrections officer who believed him.

"He's not burned-out yet," Lea said. "That's why he helped me."

To catch an identity thief

At Metro Court, DeMersseman said he can sometimes detect a case of stolen identity when the age or other identifying aspects listed in court documents are obviously dissimilar to the person before him.

"Those are the easy ones," he said. "The quickest way to go about verifying who's who is to see people face to face."

Law enforcement officers are also skilled at spotting false identities by recalling what the person he or she arrested looks like, he said.

"I'm always pleasantly surprised at how they identify those they arrest," DeMersseman said. "But there are times the officer will say, `I'm not sure this is the right person,' so I may be convinced to dismiss the charge."

Last September, for example, a woman named Susan Atencio appeared in court on a warrant stemming from a May 2007 arrest for shoplifting.

But the Albuquerque police officer told the judge he did not recognize the Susan Atencio in the courtroom as the woman he had arrested four months earlier trying to exit a South Valley Kmart wearing five shoplifted shirts, according to a Metro Court criminal complaint.

The woman told the officer that her sister, Gina Atencio, had a penchant for swiping her name.

The judge agreed, the charges were dropped and an arrest warrant was issued for Gina Atencio, who two weeks ago was arrested on charges of identity theft and two counts of forgery.

Lough, from MDC, said the Atencio case exemplifies the identity theft she sees most: those that involve related parties.

"Stranger identification theft is not as common as cousins or brothers attempting to use the others' ID," Lough said.

Robert Padilla, director of background investigations at Metro Court, said efforts are made to verify identification before the case comes before a judge by referring to Motor Vehicle Division records, mugshots, the MDC computer system, state probation and parole information and fingerprints.

But Padilla said his office's primary mission in processing the about 42,000 Metro Court cases a year is not to root out identity theft victims but to ensure that the cases are prepared for court.

For now, at least, it is up to the wronged person to contact the arresting law enforcement agency to report the identity theft.

Padilla suggests individuals contact law enforcement to have their own fingerprints taken to keep on file and ask the arresting agency to amend all criminal complaints wrongly naming them.

Lough also recommends that they carry at all times any official documents involving previous brushes with identity theft and efforts in court to rectify it.

Victims of identity theft should also keep the phone number of a good attorney handy, they said.

"It's usually the defendant's attorney who lets the court know there's a problem," Padilla said.

That, as Lea discovered, could take far too many days and far too large a toll.

Because the identity theft kept him jailed so long, Lea said he was fired as a driver for Southern Wine and Spirits.

"I lost a week of work, and I couldn't get a hold of anyone to tell them why," he said.

Without a paycheck, Lea said he won't be able to make payments on his truck, which is also in need of repair.

Lea said he also lost the home he shared with his girlfriend and their 10-month-old daughter, Kiara Angel Lea.

"I don't know what it's going to take to make this right once and for all," an exasperated Lea said. "I don't know if it's over."