A man who stole his own brother’s identity and took out two loans in his name will serve 120 days behind bars. The defendant, Mark Cope, 26, was ordered by Circuit Court Judge Bart Stanley to serve 120 days of a three-year sentence, pay $250 plus court costs, and make restitution for the two loans he obtained in his brother’s name. He will spend the remainder of his sentence on supervised probation once he is released from jail. Cope stole the identity of his brother, Kevin Mac Cope, and took out loans at local financial institutions Security Finance Corporation and World Finance Corporation. According to prosecutors, the plot to steal his brother’s identity was hatched in March 2007 when he went to a driver testing station and applied for a new license in his brother’s name. On that day Cope was able to obtain a Tennessee driver license containing his brother’s personal information but bearing his photograph. ‘All of the information on the license is that of Kevin while the picture is of Mark,’ McMinnville officer Stuart Whitman wrote in the warrant charging identity theft. Using the driver license as a form of ID, Whitman said the suspect went to Security Finance on Oct. 4 and obtained a loan for $360. He then went to World Finance two weeks later and obtained a loan for $586. His inability to repay at least one of the loans led to his crime being discovered when his brother received a past due notice addressed to him for a note he knew he did not owe. Upon checking on the loan and talking to the loan agency, he discovered his brother was the person who had signed the note using his identity.
