WARSAW — The passing of a bogus $20 bill led police into an investigation that resulted in a Fort Wayne woman facing several charges, including stealing another woman’s identity.

Heather Rene Stanley, 40, Fort Wayne, is charged with identity deception, forgery and counterfeiting, all level 6 felonies.

An investigator with the Warsaw Police Department provided a report to prosecutors that weaved a multi-layered tale that began on July 15 when police say an employee of Martin’s Supermarket reported a man passing a $20 bill to store personnel that turned out to be counterfeit.

According to the report, surveillance video captured the man passing the note and also showed a woman who came in with the man, and who police later identified as Stanley, filling out an application for a Martin’s credit card. The affidavit of probable cause reports the application was filled out in the name of another woman, not Heather Stanley.

The report further states the investigator located the woman whose name was on the application on social media. He communicated with that woman, who looked nothing like the woman on the video and who further told the investigator that she has not recently been in Warsaw. She added that she suspected her former roommate, Stanley, had filled out the application in her name. The victim told police that Stanley had received in the mail an identification card in her name — not Stanley’s — and that the card had not been returned to its rightful owner, the victim.

The investigator also reported looking up Stanley on social media and noted her likeness resembled the woman in the Martin’s video who filled out the credit card application. 

The probe also revealed that Stanley had listed the Fort Wayne address in paperwork for a recent civil case. The investigator located Stanley in the Allen County Jail and reported she admitted to filling out the application in the other woman’s name, while using her own address.