EUGENE, Ore. (AP) - A Eugene woman addicted to methamphetamines for 17 years worked her identity theft scams with increasing skill and diligence over the years, authorities say.
     
Catherine Davidson, 34, was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison.
     
Officers said she made victims of 36 people and 20 businesses before they raided her house last year and found hundreds of stolen and forged checks, stolen identity papers and credit cards.
     
Police Sgt. Terry Fitzpatrick said Davidson used a computer to create checks, which she initially wrote to herself.
     
Soon she was creating fake identities to conceal her thefts, he said.
     
Then she started distancing herself from the operation by making checks that she traded or sold to others, who fraudulently cashed them, Fitzpatrick said.
     
He said investigators caught on to Davidson after a spike in counterfeit checks, and there are no doubt many more victims.
     
"You could tell, as this thing went on, her sophistication level increased," he said. "How many she actually did? Who knows."
     
Investigators said Davidson and others used the checks for living expenses and to buy merchandise that could be sold for cash - including a scheme in which they bought large amounts of copper wire, stripped the insulation and sold the material for scrap.
     
Her criminal record dates to 1998, her first theft conviction. Her first drug conviction was in 1990.
     
She pleaded guilty Monday to three counts of identity theft and 11 counts of using a computer in a crime.
     
She told a judge she "wasn't sober long enough to realize the people I was hurting. Now that I am sober, I am ashamed."
     
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)