What Happened in Vegas...

As he explains LifeLock's services, it becomes clear that if trust is one of the company's key concepts, another is fear.

Davis is a wealth of scary statistics: Americans are 25 times more likely to be victims of identity theft than vehicle theft. Data breeches at U.S. companies spurred 150 million warning letters to Americans since 2005.

And then there's Maynard's story.

"They don't know how his identification was stolen," Davis says. "But it was stolen, and he went to, uh, the thief went to Las Vegas and opened lines of credit."

The cops put Maynard in handcuffs in front of his family and took him to jail in Phoenix. Authorities in Clark County, Nevada, tried to have him extradited. Davis integrates selling points into the tale.

"If he'd had the fraud alerts in place, it would have stopped the transaction before it happened, so he wouldn't have had to go to jail," Davis says.

Davis acknowledges that casinos keep a copy of the ID of any person who takes out a loan as large as $16,000. But he says Maynard would have had to spend weeks in jail before authorities allowed him to prove he was innocent with a simple comparison of photos.

Davis again switches to sales mode: "We would have gone to the casino and said, 'Let's see the tape. That's clearly not our client.' Our client would not have stayed in jail. He would have been exonerated quickly."

As it was, Maynard figured the best thing to do was just pay the casino its money, Davis says.

"That was the quickest way to get out from under the problem, 'cause he's in jail," Davis says. "He had to make a financial decision: 'Do I dig my heels in on moral grounds, or do I make this go away?'"

It's as if Davis is describing the actions of a man to whom money means nothing.

Yet in 2003, Maynard already was up to his eyeballs in debt. Questioned pointedly on this issue, Davis appears nervous. His foot starts bouncing under his desk. He insists that he believes Maynard's yarn is perfectly accurate.

Asked why Maynard would have to forfeit the $16,000 if he could prove he didn't take out the loan, Davis says Maynard eventually did get his money back.

But that contradicts part of the story Davis has told many times — that the experience "cost" Maynard $20,000, a figure he says included the $16,000.

Davis flip-flops later in the conversation, saying he was "under the impression" that Maynard never recovered the money.

Before the interview, New Times had made a call to Bernie Zadrowski, chief deputy district attorney in Clark County, Nevada, and supervisor of the office's bad check division.

Maynard's case was actually very simple, Zadrowski says.

A casino marker is the same thing as a personal check under Nevada law. It's a way gamblers avoid the risk of carrying around big wads of cash. A high-roller submits a form for the marker with his or her checking account number and obtains a stack of chips. The casino then has the right to deposit the marker at any time but usually waits a few months. That way, Zadrowski says, if the gambler's losses are high, the casino gives the gambler time to pay the money back. And everyone is happy.

If the check bounces, the casino makes a number of collection attempts, and if that doesn't work, the case is referred to authorities.

Records show that on January 15, 2003, Zadrowski's office contacted the Arizona Department of Public Safety and put a warrant out for Maynard's arrest. Six months later, on June 20, officers from DPS and Phoenix police went to a Phoenix apartment, picked Maynard up and took him to a Maricopa County Jail unit.

It was Maynard's second time behind bars. DPS records show he was stopped for speeding on Arizona Highway 68 near Bullhead City in 1991 and taken to jail in Mohave County because of an unpaid speeding ticket.

Faced with untold numbers of gamblers who fail to pay their markers, the Clark County D.A.'s office long ago created a diversion program that gives deadbeats a second chance to pay up rather than face criminal charges. Once Maynard finally coughed up the 16 grand, Nevada dropped its criminal case against him.

Because Las Vegas is one of the identity-theft capitals of the world — right up there with the Phoenix metro area — Clark County provides a "forgery packet" to anyone claiming to be a victim. A claim like Maynard's would have been investigated thoroughly, Zadrowski maintains.

"Not once did anybody ever suggest, in this particular case, that this was a case of stolen identity," he says.

Maynard never filed a police report for identity theft, or it would be part of the D.A.'s office file, Zadrowski says.

"The only call we received while he was in jail was from his girlfriend. She wanted to know how to get him out of jail," he says.

Zadrowski pulled the Arizona driver's license submitted to the casino by the person who took out the loan and e-mailed a copy to New Times.