Impostor

The state Motor Vehicle Administration has filed charges against a 20-year-old Baltimore County man they allege obtained a driver's license by impersonating a Parkville man who was slain execution-style last December.The warrant, taken out in Anne Arundel District Court in Glen Burnie, charges Brian James Everett of the first block of Perry Falls Place with making a false entry in a public record and with causing an unauthorized access to the MVA database.MVA officials obtained the warrant Wednesday, and that night Baltimore County police officers checked Mr. Everett's house and other places he was known to frequent but did not find him.Neither Baltimore County police nor the MVA would release a photograph of the man being sought -- a picture that was made Jan. 29 when an impostor applied for renewal of murder victim John Kenneth Temple's driver's license.

Investigators will question a state Motor Vehicle Administration clerk today about the renewal of a driver's license in January for a man who assumed the identity of John Kenneth Temple, who was slain Dec. 3 with his wife in their Parkville apartment.Charles Demby, an MVA criminal investigator, said he is working with Baltimore County homicide detectives "to catch this guy the best way we can." That will involve questioning the clerk about nTC the identification the impostor presented for the license renewal Jan. 29."

The unsolved, execution-style slayings of John and Lori Temple in their Parkville apartment in December have generated a mystery within a mystery: Who has assumed the dead man's identity?Within weeks of the killings, a man closely resembling Mr. Temple-- in his 20s, thin, with black hair and a mustache -- tried to register to vote using the victim's name and birth date in both Baltimore and Baltimore County.Although those efforts were thwarted, the impostor succeeded in renewing a Maryland driver's license in Mr. Temple's name in January at the Motor Vehicle Administration's Glen Burnie headquarters.

At least 20 elderly Baltimoreans have been robbed in recent months -- in some cases losing thousands of dollars -- in a scheme by con artists claiming to be Social Security officials, and demanding the return of purported overpayments.The scam usually begins with a telephone call in which the victim is told of the overpayment and the need for immediate repayment to prevent a cutoff of future checks, according to David W. Richardson, Baltimore district manager for the Social Security Administration.

Those luxury catalogs and holiday ads drip with gemstones and costly materials. To most holiday shoppers, they are dream books that get lost in the reality of discount store lines and a budget crunch.However, the romance of legendary presents persists through the gift-giving season. The czarinas received Faberge trinkets, grand duchesses found yards of pearls in their silk stockings, and some of the European royals were wrapped in sable throws to keep them snuggy on a sleigh ride.Today, knock-offs and reproductions are crafted with the look of luxury but a fraction of the cost of the real thing.

OPERATION SHYLOCK: A CONFESSION.Philip Roth.Simon & Schuster.398 pages. $23. Here it is, Opus 20 by the author of "Patrimony" (supposedly a memoir), "The Facts" (ostensibly an autobiography) and a passel of semiautobiographical novels, such as "Deceptions," which defy the reader to call them fiction. Here is yet another book straddling the line, refusing to tell its readers quite how it wants to be read. Is it, as the subtitle alleges, "A Confession," Philip Roth's honest recounting of some personal responsibility?

THE MAN WHO WAS LATE.Louis Begley.Knopf.240 pages. $21.Louis Begley's first novel, "Wartime Lies," told the harrowing story of the Jewish boy Maciek and his Aunt Tania who, through intelligence, courage and carefully dispensed cash, managed to survive by passing as Christians in Poland during World War II. For his new novel, Mr. Begley has chosen a very different setting and subject: the well-born, moneyed elite of New York and Paris during the late 1960s...

A trial yesterday in Carroll County District Court decided who the man with the goatee isn't.He isn't Bruce Donald Willis, a Minneapolis attorney he impersonated for almost two years, because Mr. Willis came to the courtroom with his birth certificate, passport -- even a 1962 Yale University yearbook to prove his identity.He isn't James Ross Lincoln, a man who matched his description and was wanted on outstanding warrants in Arizona and Florida, because Mr. Lincoln is dead and buried in California.

Life is getting tough for cable thieves in Baltimore County: First, Comcast Cablevision gave them until May 15 to fess up or suffer the consequences. Now, swindlers are hitting them up for $50 in a door-to-door cable scam of their own.According to Comcast, swindlers passing themselves off as Comcast auditors are knocking on doors throughout the county and offering to unhook illegal cable customers to help them avoid prosecution by Comcast. The company has said it plans to go after cable thieves when its amnesty program ends May 15.For a $50 charge, the scam artists offer to disconnect the illegal hookup or to look the other way when Comcast starts reporting people for prosecution after the amnesty period.

The Baltimore City Detention Center was using new procedures to identify inmates yesterday because a prisoner being held on federal drug charges posed as another inmate and talked his way out of the jail on Christmas Day.Roland L. Campbell presented himself to jail officials as a prisoner named Corey Ford, who was due to be released. Campbell passed the screening tests, procedures that included comparing Campbell to the photograph kept in Ford's file and asking him 10 questions, including such personal information as a Social Security number and a mother's maiden name.