Parole jumper hid for 26 years with stolen ID
For 26 years, Allen Frank Martin lived a lie.
After jumping parole in Arkansas, the felon stole a wallet from a Marine at a casino in Reno, Nevada, in 1990.
Vowing never to return to prison, Martin assumed the Marine’s identity and hid out from the law that way until being caught last year.
His final hideout was a mobile home in a secluded rural part of eastern Oklahoma, near the Arkansas border, court records show. The property was surrounded by an electrified barbed wire fence.
He was found because someone close to him turned him in for Social Security fraud, the records show.
Last week, Martin, 57, was sentenced in Arkansas to seven years in federal prison for aggravated identity theft and theft of government funds. He pleaded guilty to those offenses last year.
He also was ordered to serve to three additional months in federal prison for failing to show up for court last July.
He pleaded guilty to that offense in January, admitting he removed a GPS ankle monitor and fled after a judge ordered him to court for a bond revocation hearing. U.S. deputy marshals tracked him down in November, this time working at a hotel in McAlester.
After his release, he must pay $277,767 in restitution to the Social Security Administration for fraudulently accepting disability payments since 2003.
Identity theft has become a common crime across the country. Last year alone, there were 16.7 million U.S. victims, one study found. What makes Martin’s case exceptional is how long his illegal charade went on.
The victim, John David Bailey, didn’t know his identity had been stolen until he attempted to buy a vehicle in Kentucky three years after his wallet had been taken at the casino, court records show.
“Bailey stated that due to his identity being stolen, his credit had been ruined,” a Social Security Administration special agent reported in a court affidavit.
“The investigation revealed that Martin had utilized the Bailey identity since 1990 with various government agencies, businesses and companies, assuming a separate life as Bailey,” the special agent, Charles Briscoe, wrote in the affidavit.
“Such uses include employment, obtaining driver’s licenses from different states, bank fraud and Social Security fraud,” the agent wrote.
As a teenager, Martin was put on probation in Oklahoma for a 1977 burglary. A few years later, he was put on probation again in Oklahoma, this time for robbery.
He went to prison in Arkansas for a robbery there, in 1982. He was paroled in 1988.
After jumping parole and changing his name, Martin lived as John David Bailey in California, Arkansas, Montana, Arkansas again and finally Oklahoma, the records show.
Since 2009, he had been doing construction work under the stolen name in Oklahoma and Arkansas, the records show.
His construction jobs involved remodeling hotels and motels across both states, including in Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Midwest City.
Martin began getting disability payments after being
diagnosed with cancer. The payments were considered fraudulent both because he had applied under a stolen name and because he did not report his income from the construction jobs.
An informant reported him to the Social Security Administration in September 2016.
He was indicted in Arkansas because his disability payments were deposited in a bank there. U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III chose his punishment at his sentencing Thursday at the federal courthouse in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
The raid on Martin’s home in Sequoyah County began before dawn on Jan. 24, 2017, because the informant had warned he could have an assault rifle and a handgun secured “on his hip.”
The informant “stated that Martin was always prepared and armed on his property, waiting for law enforcement to try to apprehend him,” Special Agent Briscoe told a judge in a written request for a no-knock search warrant.
“Source ... advised that Martin made frequent statements he was never returning to prison and that he was going to ‘fight to the end’ with law enforcement officials,” the agent wrote in the affidavit.
Federal agents told the judge an Oklahoma Highway Patrol tactical team would conduct the raid because of the danger.
Ironically, no one had been looking for Martin for years. He actually had been discharged from parole in 2004 in Arkansas during an “administrative purging of records” even though he was listed as an absconder.