ALBUQUERQUE – A fugitive who lived for more than 40 years under the stolen identity of a deceased Arkansas man pleaded guilty to federal identity theft, passport fraud, and firearms offenses.
According to court documents, Stephen Craig Campbell, 73, assumed the identity of Walter Lee Coffman, who died in 1975 at the age of 22, just months after graduating from the University of Arkansas with an engineering degree in the early 1980s. Campbellfirst applied for a U.S. passport in Coffman’s name in 1984 and renewed it multiple times, always submitting his own photograph and current address. In 1995, he obtained a replacement Social Security card in Coffman’s name. Around 2003, he purchased property in Weed, New Mexico, under Coffman’s identity and continued renewing the fraudulent passport in 2005 and 2015.
On September 4, 2019, Campbell knowingly presented a fraudulent U.S. passport bearing the name “Walter Coffman” to a New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division employee in Cloudcroft. He used the passport to renew a New Mexico driver’s license in Coffman’s name, knowing it was not legitimate. He continued to possess the fraudulent passport until it was seized on February 19, 2025.
Campbell also admitted that he knowingly possessed a Social Security card not lawfully issued to him with the intent to defraud the United States. In 1992, he contacted the Social Security Administration in an attempt to remove Coffman’s death record. On October 15, 1995, he fraudulently applied for and received a replacement Social Security card in Coffman’s name. Using this identity, he applied for and received Social Security Title II Retirement Insurance Benefits beginning in 2015, ultimately receiving approximately $140,000 in fraudulent government benefits.…