When stealing mail out of mailboxes wasn't enough, some Snohomish County identity thieves turned to burglarizing vacant homes.

Arlington police Detective Rory Bolter said thieves working out of a Smokey Point motel room have forged checks, identification cards and credit cards by stealing identities of more than 100 people across Western Washington.

On March 17, Bolter was at the motel helping sheriff's deputies search for a stolen car when he said the motel staff tipped him to an empty room where he found shredded checks and driver's licenses. Bolter learned the guests had moved to another room and went there, and a woman inside consented to a search, he said.

Police seized two computers, a fax machine, a copier, several cameras, a scanner and a printer, Bolter said. They also found two shoeboxes stuffed with stolen mail, he said.

The woman was the only person in the room when police arrived. No arrests were made.

Bolter said he found mail for victims in Marysville, Kenmore, Redmond, Bothell, Everett, Lynnwood, Arlington, Bellingham, Monroe and other cities. He believes people were creating fake IDs, checks and credit cards.

"The stuff [mail] I recovered is the tip of the iceberg," he said. "There's probably more than 100 victims out there."

Bolter said he has pushed off his other cases to work solely on the alleged identity-theft ring. He said he expects to begin making arrests in the next two weeks.

Bolter believes some of the same suspects broke into an Arlington home March 19 and stole checks, a Movado watch and a cellphone that had belonged to a woman who had died the previous day.

In another case, sometime between Feb. 1 and early March, thieves started burglarizing a Snohomish woman's vacant home after the woman moved in with relatives in Spanaway, Pierce County. More than $100,000 in antique coins and other items were stolen, county sheriff's Detective Scott Wells said.

"They cleaned her house out," he said, adding that bedroom furniture, "lavishly handcrafted trunks," china, glasses and crystal were among the belongings taken.

On March 1, while serving an unrelated arrest warrant at a Monroe apartment, deputies saw the 42-year-old man they were looking for walking across a parking lot with an antique painting. When the man was arrested, deputies found some of the stolen antique coins in his pocket, Wells said. The man was later released on bail.

Deputies returned to the man's apartment March 4 with a search warrant and found about $50,000 worth of items from the Snohomish woman's home inside the man's apartment and garage, Wells said. Authorities are searching for the man again.

"As soon as he's found, he'll be arrested on the new charges," Wells said, adding that the man is wanted on suspicion of burglary, theft, trafficking in stolen property, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Gloria Nelson, the Snohomish woman whose house was burglarized, said thieves had taken "everything."

"Oriental carved chests, precious jewelry, pots and pans, and pictures," said Nelson, 73. "A lot of the things they took were made by my daughter and things I had saved from my childhood, including the piggy bank I got when I was 7.

"I've lost so much. The [deputy] sheriff is working to find my things, but it's a feeling that your life had been taken away from you. Nothing will be the same again."

Wells said the suspect he's looking for isn't associated with the thieves that Bolter, in Arlington, is seeking. Wells believes the 42-year-old man and his associates broke into four homes in unincorporated Snohomish County and stole antiques. He said he is working with Bothell police because he thinks the suspects also burglarized homes there.

Last summer, deputies in North Snohomish County were overwhelmed with reports of antiques, guns and home appliances being stolen from homes, storage sheds and barns in Arlington, Lakewood, Silvana and Stanwood. Several people were arrested.

Jennifer Sullivan: 425-783-0604 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com