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FARMINGTON — A man is facing charges of forgery after the Davis County Sheriff's Office says it discovered he served two months in jail pretending to be his brother.
The sheriff's office released a video on Oct. 6 detailing the investigation of Adam Burdick, 41, who police said deceived arresting officers, parole officers, jail personnel, his public defender and the court into believing he was his brother.
Burdick was arrested on Sept. 14 for investigation of felony-level forgery, two counts of providing false personal information with the intent to be another person, and providing false and/or misleading information.
Burdick was arrested and booked into Davis County Jail on Nov. 14, 2022, under his brother Andrew's name for drug-related charges, the sheriff's office said. Investigators said he pleaded guilty as the brother to possession of controlled substances on Nov. 23. Burdick was released from custody on Jan. 11.
"He gave us no indication, no reason to believe he wasn't who he was saying he was," Chief Deputy Arnold Butcher said.
All bookings at the jail are recorded by surveillance cameras, but the footage is typically deleted after a month unless concern or suspicious activity arises. The sheriff's office said the footage of Burdick's booking was deleted around Dec. 14.
The sheriff's office says it learned in August that Burdick had provided his brother's identification instead of his own. Details on how the office learned of the alleged forgery were not available.
"It is not extremely unusual that somebody will attempt to identify themselves as someone else, but usually those are always caught. This one is quite rare because it is a case where that false identity wasn't caught before the person was convicted and spent time in our jail," Sheriff Kelly Sparks said.
The sheriff's office started an investigation into the incident to determine how the forgery was accomplished and why it was not discovered sooner.
"Government-issued photo identification, fingerprints and booking photos are all typically used to identify individuals booked into the jail. Jail personnel followed established protocols; however, those protocols proved to be insufficient in this case," the sheriff's office said in a statement.
No deputies have been or will be disciplined over Burdick's alleged deception, the office said. The staff is generally "very good at seeing through such deceit" but the process did not "deliver the results our staff or our community needed" in this case and so new procedures are being implemented.
"As a result, we have updated our processes to include notification of the prosecutor's office and jail administrators when an arrestee's identity is in question. Using another person's identity in such a way is a crime, and we will do all within our power to positively identify these individuals and see that they are successfully prosecuted," the office said.
Deputies said Burdick did not have an ID on him at the time of arrest. The sheriff's office has decided moving forward if an individual does not have ID on them, jail personnel must conduct a "robust records review" to cross-reference previous bookings and available data on identifying information.
Fingerprints are not required under Utah's Bureau of Criminal Identification regulations, so Burdick's arrest did not require fingerprinting. The sheriff's office said in the future, in any situation where an individual does not have an ID on them, mandatory fingerprinting will take place.
"Those who are involved with the criminal justice system often have changing appearances. Booking photos that are even just a few years old may differ significantly from an individual's current appearance. In this case, jail staff did not detect the deception through viewing previous mug shots," the sheriff's office said.
Jail personnel will continue using previous booking photos but will take into consideration that those photos may not be an accurate representation of how the person looks presently, the office said.
