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Makers of counterfeit IDs grow more sophisticated
Arrests for driver's license fraud are higher this year, North Carolina officials say
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Published: November 28, 2009
RALEIGH
Makers of counterfeit identification cards are growing more common and sophisticated as it becomes more difficult to live without the government-issued IDs, North Carolina officials said.
The N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles made more arrests for driver's license fraud in the first 10 months of this year than all of last year, the Raleigh News & Observer reported yesterday.
"It's not just (underage kids) getting a driver's license to be able to beat the guy at the door to get into the club. It's getting to be a much more serious problem for everybody," DMV Commissioner Mike Robertson said.
"If you look at what businesses accept, your North Carolina driver's license is your ticket. It gets you on an airplane. It cashes your checks. It gets you other identification."
To fight the fakes, the DMV in September finished shifting its operations so that all driver's licenses are issued from the agency's central office in Raleigh.
Applicants still go to field offices and turn in their paperwork and proof of identification, but they get only a temporary license.
The agency takes an additional 15 to 20 days to run the applicant's information through federal databases, to verify that the applicant is the person who walked in the door and that the address given actually exists. Then the DMV mails out the license.
Those steps have cut down tremendously on attempts to get a fraudulent license at DMV field offices, Robertson said.
Thwarting efforts to wrangle real licenses has driven more customers to the counterfeiters.
A bogus-identification shop needs little more than a high-quality laser printer, the right card stock and a bit of know-how to start mimicking special inks and shiny holograms well enough to fool a cashier and cash a bad check.
The N.C. Alcohol Law Enforcement Division closed a document lab in a Beaufort County mobile home park a week ago.
State and local police also shut down an operation in south Charlotte last week.
Two months ago, agents broke up operations in Forest City and Gastonia that were churning out fake driver's licenses for six states, Social Security cards, resident-alien cards and birth certificates.
Demand among illegal immigrants is helping drive the growth of the fraudulent-ID business, state officials said.
Those undocumented residents need identification to transact business and to drive. All six of the suspects in the Charlotte, Forest City and Gastonia operations were either illegal immigrants or were suspected to be.
When authorities raided the Forest City operation, DMV Inspector J.T. Ratliff discovered something that concerned him.
"We found evidence where he appeared to be tampering with military IDs, experimenting with making them," Ratliff said.
Some peddlers of phony IDs don't have to hide from law enforcement, because they are based outside the country.
The Web site www.newidcards.com, which has a United Kingdom telephone number, also offers live operators who take questions in an Internet chat room.
When the News & Observer asked whether the company was concerned that its products were designed to help people break the law, the operator left the chat room.
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