WASHINGTON COUNTY – A man who authorities said is known to be a significant drug dealer in the area allegedly switched occupations to defraud the U.S. along with its citizens. Jordan Matthew Lucia was charged Friday, while incarcerated on previous charges, after authorities exercised a search warrant and found among his possessions very detailed personal and financial information of 717 citizens across the U.S., along with tools to create counterfeit money.

“It appeared that he was attempting or going to attempt to steal or defraud several hundreds of people throughout the U.S. of their money,” according to court documents. “He was illegally in possession of their information and templates to be able to produce fraudulent identification and counterfeit U.S. currency.”

After an extensive investigation into 27-year-old Lucia, who had been on the run from the law for his alleged involvement in a home invasion robbery, assault, drug-related crimes and numerous warrants for his arrest, Lucia was apprehended in March in the town of Virgin following a high-speed pursuit and a foot chase.

After Lucia’s arrest in March, a search warrant was obtained for the residence in Springdale where he had been staying and for his laptop computer, according to a probable cause statement written by a Washington County Drug Task Force detective in support of Friday’s charges. What detectives allegedly found on his laptop is a very serious crime on the rise across the country.

Members of the task force and FIST Unit executed the search warrant at the residence. During the search of Lucia’s room, they located several drug-related items, a laptop, a printer and several suspected fraudulent identification cards, the statement said.

Subsequently, detectives submitted an affidavit for a search warrant of Lucia’s laptop, which was granted and executed at the Dixie State Crime Lab.

While searching the contents of Lucia’s laptop, templates of counterfeit U.S. currency were discovered.

“I located ‘how to’ instructions on what fonts and colors to use for different parts of currency,” the detective wrote, “and how to set your printer properly and what type of printer to use when counterfeiting.”

Additionally, several templates for producing fraudulent identifications were found. The statement of probable cause said:

Stored on the laptop was a book showing all the features from several different State’s identification cards. There were close-up pictures of the embedded holograms for several of the States as well. I also located, what appeared to be, correspondence (with) an online domain that was giving tips on how to produce these fraudulent ID’s.

Even more egregious was the information found in an Excel file on Lucia’s laptop where he stored detailed personal and financial information of 717 citizens in the U.S.

According to the probable cause statement:

This information included each person’s full name, IP address, home address (with city and state), postal code, email address, driver’s license number, monthly net income, their employer’s name, the person’s bank name, routing number, their account numbers, social security number, work phone numbers, home phone numbers and dates of birth. This was for each 717 real persons. It was listed in alphabetical order by state they lived in and approximately 30 different states were listed, including Utah.

After speaking with the County Attorney’s Office, the Washington County Drug Task Force was advised to charge Lucia with one count for every 100 identifications Lucia was in possession of.

The new charges brought against Lucia Friday include 11 third-degree felonies for identity fraud and the possession of financial transaction card information, a forgery writing device and another’s identifying documents.

Judge John J. Walton, of the 5th District Court, ordered $25,000 bail on Lucia’s new charges for his release pending trial.

Lucia was found indigent by the court during his initial court appearance Tuesday and will be represented by court-appointed attorney Douglas Terry. He is scheduled to make his next court appearance on June 22.

Lucia has been incarcerated since March in the Washington County Purgatory Correctional Facility where he is being held on a $50,000 cash-only bail for three felony charges, including theft by receiving stolen property, knowingly producing an identification document without authorization and failing to stop at the command of police.

Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.

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