PALMER -- John Bo Phillips confessed to being the leader of an identity-theft ring that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Alaskans in a tape-recorded police interview played in Superior Court on Wednesday, the second day of Phillips' trial.

Authorities say the ring stole mail from boxes between Anchorage and Fairbanks, used it to create false identities and bilked unwitting Alaskans of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Assistant district attorney Suzanne Powell told jurors Phillips was smug. The 23-year-old North Pole man replied "Yeah" when a police officer asked on the tape if he was "the CEO" of the theft ring.

Phillips' attorney, Lyle Stohler, said in his opening statement Tuesday that after the jury hears the evidence, "some people might start checking their mailboxes on a more regular basis."

But Stohler predicted the prosecution would fail to prove all 13 felony and three misdemeanor counts against Phillips.

Palmer police stopped Phillips in mid-December 2005 for reckless driving in his Ford Bronco. Patrol officer James Gipson testified Tuesday that he saw a shotgun in the back seat, then asked Phillips for and was granted permission to search the Bronco.

Gipson testified that he found checkbooks. The names printed on some of the checks matched a pair of fake driver's licenses also found in the car that bore Phillips' photo, Gipson said. Phillips told him the fake IDs came from a friend who was trying to prove a point.

Gipson turned the case over to Palmer police investigator Kelly Turney, who searched the Bronco and Phillips' other belongings as well as a storage unit in Anchorage. Turney matched receipts from stores with checks he identified as fraudulent. Photocopies of the checks were among the hundreds of pieces of evidence Powell presented Tuesday and Wednesday.

Eventually Turney came to believe that Phillips had been stealing mail and using information gleaned from it to create false identifications. He said in February that, all told, the theft ring stole $300,000 to $500,000 by cashing stolen checks and writing phony checks on other people's accounts.

The probe culminated in a series of arrests in February.

Turney teamed with his sister Pearl Holston, a Fairbanks police investigator, to work the case. She testified that on Feb. 2, Phillips asked to speak with her and she recorded the conversation.

Phillips said on the tape that the day he was arrested he'd made a choice to stop committing crimes.

"The more I spent the worse I ... felt," he said. He was tired of living on the run, he said.

Holston also read into the record a letter recovered from one of Phillips' laptops. The letter, addressed to the governor, spoke in vague terms about a type of easily perpetrated crime prevalent in Alaska that Phillips had committed. The letter offered Murkowski help in thwarting that type of crime.

The case grew as it progressed, eventually implicating many defendants. Andre Tanner, 24, Darren Peterson, 37, Robert L. Strickland, 25, Stacey "Snake" Visintainer, 33, Jeramy Freriks, 29, Michelle Olson, 21, and Misty Thormahlen, 36, are all facing charges in Fairbanks.

Kevin Coe, 32, also charged in Palmer, pleaded no contest July 14 to one forgery count and one of criminal impersonation. He is due in court Sept. 25.

Phillips' trial is expected to last through today and possibly into next week.

Reporter Andrew Wellner can be reached at awellner@adn.com or 1-907-352-6710.

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