In America… he is accused of committing dozens of crimes, and no one knows his name Miscellaneous

For more than three decades, a mysterious man has lived in the United States as a ghost without an identity, hiding behind dozens of aliases and leaving behind a criminal record that extends from robbery to attempted murder. The New York Times published a journalistic investigation revealing the amazing story of this fraudster who tampered with identities and state documents, exploiting the stolen name “Karl Avenger” for years, reaching the peak of his audacity in a major real estate fraud operation in Queens, New York, in 2023.

In a case that shook the city, the accused and his accomplices forged real estate titles worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the exposure of this latest crime did not reveal his real name, but rather opened a new chapter of mystery. The man faced the judiciary under the name “John Doe” (unidentified), after investigators failed to confirm his identity, despite the presence of his accumulated criminal records since 1992. How was America’s first identity thief able to deceive the justice system for decades, and why did his real name remain a mystery until this moment?

This is what the report reviews in a story whose chapters have not yet been closed.

The beginning of the story: The thief has no identity

The story began in 1992 when a 16-year-old who identified himself as Elvis Teller was arrested for robbery in Manhattan. Over the following years, the defendant used multiple names such as Marco Ferrari, John Stump, Bobby Jackson, and Carl Avinger, and was arrested more than 30 times on various charges, from robbery to attempted murder.

Identity Theft: How I Became Karl Avenger

During his imprisonment in 2002, the accused got to know a prisoner named Dwayne Avinger, who told him about his family in North Carolina. After his release from prison in 2003, the accused took advantage of this information and entered the family home, where he stole the wallet of the real Carl Avinger, including his ID card and insurance number.

Since then, he adopted the identity of “Karl Avenger” and began using it in a series of new crimes, devastating the life of the real victim, who suffered housing and work difficulties due to the criminal record unfairly attributed to him.

From drugs to real estate fraud

In 2006, he was arrested in Oklahoma after being caught with 51 pounds of marijuana while driving a minivan. He then used the name “Karl E. Avinger”, but his false identity was soon revealed, and impersonation charges were brought against him, and he spent 3 years in prison.

He then returned to New York, and continued his crimes under multiple names until 2022, and his crimes included driving without a license, threatening, and forgery, which led to the accumulation of a huge criminal record under his alias.

Real estate fraud in queens

In 2023, the accused began his most daring operation in cooperation with a new partner, Autumn Valeri, a vice president at a real estate company called Fave Realty.

The duo devised a fraudulent plan that included:

• Locate empty homes in upscale neighborhoods.
• Forging their title deeds and transferring them to fictitious companies they owned.
• Forging signatures of the original owners and notary seals.
• Resell properties for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But this plan collapsed after the theft of a house in Kew Gardens Hills belonging to a family that had owned it for 83 years. They sold the house for $600,000, but the owner discovered the theft when she received a notice of transfer of ownership.

The family lost all their memories and family belongings, which the duo threw in the trash, sparking a massive investigation led by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.

Reveal the truth

In March 2024, after news of the case spread, the real Carl Avinger from Tennessee contacted prosecutors, confirming that the accused man was not him. Investigations showed that the accused had used his name for more than 20 years, and from that moment on, the investigation turned into an identity puzzle.

Who is he really?

When confronted in court, the defendant claimed that his name was Craig Taylor and that his mother was called Margaret Curtis. But the woman who claimed to be his mother later confirmed that his real name is Angelo Alexander Forbes, from the Bahamas, and that he was born in 1976.

However, investigators have not yet been able to confirm his true identity.

Open end

In October 2025, the defendant admitted to stealing Carl Avinger’s identity, and was sentenced to between 3 and a half and 7 years in prison, in addition to a possible 9 years in other cases related to real estate fraud.

As for his former partner, Valerie, she lost her real estate license and was sentenced to 5 years of probation. As for him, he attended the final trial session under the name “John Doe,” which in English means “unidentified,” awaiting the final ruling on November 13, 2025.

This story made some people search for the reason for the justice system’s inability to determine who stands before it. How could a man spend more than 30 years impersonating the names of others, tampering with documents, deceiving the system, and remaining until this moment without a real name?