She favored Prada, Gucci and $3,000 jeans. She liked Victoria's Secret and Saks Fifth Avenue, and she put down $12,000 for a liposuction appointment.

And she paid for it all on other people's credit – with the names and personal information she stole from them. They'd close out the bogus accounts, but she'd reopen them. Even when authorities thought they had shut her down, she bailed out of jail and rang up tens of thousands of dollars in additional charges.

So far, the tab on Mia Camille Garza's identity theft shopping spree has come to more than $1 million. It may go higher, with the information she pilfered from 29,500 Kaiser Permanente employees still out in cyberspace.

On Thursday, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gary E. Ransom sentenced Garza to 12 years and four months in state prison. Investigators say they're still getting calls about people getting arrested who are using the names of the company's victimized employees.

"Twelve years may seem like a long time in jail, but I'm sure my life and my credit will be affected for far many more years," said Michele Lites, one of several Kaiser employees who spoke during the sentencing hearing.

Lites, a 45-year-old dietitian who works at two Kaiser hospitals in Sacramento, said in court she can't buy a car on her own, can't use a credit card to rent a hotel room and can't get a loan for her daughter's college education fund. Lites said Garza ran up $300,000 on her tab.

"My biggest concern is that my personal information is still out there," Lites said. "It's in the ether. I never know when I'm going to have this situation pop up again."

Deputy District Attorney Robert Clancey said it is the largest identify theft case that he is aware of, with 305 Kaiser victims so far reporting fraudulent charges authorities have linked to Garza.

Garza, 31, got the information in July 2007 from her job as a benefits clerk at the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers office in Oakland. Kaiser compliance officer Bruce Burroughs said the IDs gave Garza her own personal "treasure trove" of stolen data.

"Armed with that information, she was able to run credit reports on our employees," Burroughs said. "She was able to identify their accounts. She changed their personal profiles, reopened closed accounts and opened new accounts and took advantage of instant credit offered by major credit card companies."

Authorities arrested Garza in Contra Costa County in January 2009, but she posted bail and went back into action, Burroughs said – even with an electronic monitoring bracelet around her ankle.

Eleven months later, the Sacramento Valley High-Tech Crimes Task Force caught up with her while she was dressed in a surgical gown and preparing for the fat-reduction surgery she had paid for on the account of Kaiser employee Sierra Morgan.

"I'm very glad she was not able to get the liposuction," Morgan said. "You cannot fix what's wrong with you on the inside by manipulating what's wrong with you on the outside."

Before Thursday's sentencing, Garza already had been convicted in Contra Costa County and sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. She pleaded no contest Aug. 3 in the Sacramento case to 12 counts of identify theft. On Jan. 10, she faces a restitution hearing in Sacramento.

Brought into court in chains, Garza told the eight victims in the courtroom she was sorry. She described herself as "a sick single mother," a manic-depressive who "self-medicated" on crystal meth. She said she was forced into stealing the names by a physically abusive boyfriend.

"I am not a career criminal," Garza told the judge. "I'm simply somebody who has fallen off the path. I am somebody worth saving."

Clancey, the prosecutor, confirmed Garza is the victim in a pending domestic violence case, but he flashed on the courtroom projector photos of handbags, shoes and other products aimed at women and suggested she operated mainly for her own purposes.

"We went from town to town through storage sheds, picking up items," he said.

The victims said Garza drained their bank accounts. Almost as bad, they said, they had to spend hours on hold to fix things with the credit card companies to explain they weren't crooks. Then they'd get disconnected.

Even worse were the retail encounters in the malls. "I think the most embarrassing part was when I tried to buy a $20 shirt at Macy's and was treated like a criminal," said Robin Salter.

Bryana Barsky-ex, a psychologist for Kaiser in the Bay Area, called it "a crazy-making experience."

It's one the victims are prepared to deal with for a long, long time.

"I don't know where the next assault is going to come from," Darlene Crockett told the judge.

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