From Underage Drinkers to Criminals: Examining the World of Fake IDs

Matthew Rudow

 

Millions of college students returned to campus this fall, where they have been experiencing the joys and hassles of modern college life. For many, this goes beyond complaining about dormitory food and spending endless hours in the library, and includes illegal underage drinking. Many of these students utilize little-noticed or discussed websites that provide easy access to fake driver’s licenses. These websites appear to be aimed at college kids out for a good time, but in fact they can provide an easy means for criminals to obtain sophisticated fake identification through the U.S. mail. These websites haven’t received much attention from the media, perhaps due to the pervasive sense that underage drinking and flouting of the law are simply a part of the college experience. However, a small group of experts are sounding the alarm on these websites and the threat from a serious criminal element out to exploit them, and are calling for coordinated action to combat a major threat to national security. 

 

Unfortunately, the criminals behind these fake driver’s licenses tend to learn as they go, gaining more information about the system and finding new techniques to beat it. This makes spotting fakes  difficult and compels law enforcement to scramble to keep up. Many fabricated driver’s licenses can pass the quick glance of a bouncer, and even the bar codes on many fake cards have become detailed enough to fool a typical scanning device.

 

The websites that offer these cards, though clearly illegal, have reached out to buyers by advertising on social networking sites, and may show up in major search engines. Some websites even purport to copyright their illegal methods so that other criminals won’t steal their techniques for breaking the law. These sites may sell themselves as a “novelty” service for college students who are encouraged to provide any name and birth date they want, pay online and receive a customized fake ID in the mail, according to Brian Zimmer, President of the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License. 

 

Many of these sites pose no national security risk, and only threaten the student’s sense of pride. Once users have provided their names, photos and payment information, bogus websites may simply take money from students and then ignore them. The underage drinker, of course, has no recourse, as it's highly unlikely he will formally report his failure to illegally obtain a fake ID. 

 

Still, a user may be successful in this effort, and receive a real-looking identification card delivered right to his mailbox. This poses a risk to other drivers, restaurant patrons and staff who may face an inexperienced and belligerent drinker, property owners facing the threat of damage, as well as hospitals that must deal with the consequences of overindulgence.

 

 

Additionally, criminals have increasingly been using fake driver’s licenses to cash government assistance checks they pilfer from the intended recipient’s mailbox. Thieves are able to easily order a fake license that matches the names on the checks, and then obtain cash using the cards from grocery or liquor stores that lack the means to carefully verify driver’s licenses, according to Zimmer.

 

Thankfully, some state officials have begun to take notice. The Attorney General of Arkansas, Dustin McDaniel, has filed a lawsuit to stop a Las Vegas-based company’s sale of “novelty” ID cards, which he says serve no legal purpose and are in violation of that state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. At the federal level, some lawmakers have offered a surprisingly bipartisan response to the problem. Senators Charles Grassley (R) and Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa, and Mark Kirk (R) and Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois, have urged Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yesui to crack down on the flood of fake driver’s licenses coming from that country. Senator Durbin has warned of the grave threat posed by these driver’s licenses, saying a card “is essentially an ID passkey to enter into the security system in America, and these IDs could fool a trained security officer,” and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was copied on the message.

 

The letter specifically addressed a group calling itself ID Chief, formerly a leading supplier of fake driver’s licenses. ID Chief has subsequently posted a notice on its website informing users its “novelty id” service has gone inactive. While the site billed itself simply as a resource to “help the poor student have some fun,” in fact, ID Chief reinvented the fake driver’s license industry. According to the security experts at the nonpartisan Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License, the site was a leading producer of sophisticated counterfeits that appealed to a dangerous criminal element under the guise of offering a service for college students. The 9/11 conspirators, for example, all possessed fake driver’s licenses, according to a GAO report. Troublingly,  the report suggests the years since 9/11 have not seen enough improvement in drivers’ license security systems.

 

In September, the GAO issued a report on its investigation into fraudulent driver’s licenses, reporting significant vulnerabilities and insufficient state protections. Due to the lack of cross-state fraud detection systems, GAO agents were able to obtain a license in a state with insufficient verification tools using false credentials, and then take that driver’s license across the border into another state. Even if that second state had more sophisticated tools, it would recognize the license from another state as valid. In this way, GAO investigators were able to obtain false driver’s licenses in three states, using fraudulent licenses and birth certificates they brought across the state line. The state license issuers did purport to verify the fake applicant’s Social Security number, but such a check would only verify that a number does exist in the Social Security Administration’s database, not that it corresponds to the person applying for a driver’s license.

 

 

The GAO report urged the Department of Homeland Security to improve identification as an interim measure until the country develops better systems to “detect cross-state and birth certificate fraud.” In the meantime, the GAO has suggested enhanced cooperation between state, federal and local groups as part of a coordinated DHS effort to combat ID fraud. The GAO has suggested this strategy could include expanding the use of photo-sharing programs to ensure the integrity of photo IDs, and Social Security identification programs to thwart the illegal distribution of numbers. The GAO has suggested that DHS work with the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators to employ advanced photo-sharing technology between law-enforcement agencies. Currently, 23 states participate in the photo-sharing program, but those states are vulnerable to the criminals who get fake IDs from states that don’t. DHS has asserted these additional steps are redundant and unnecessary.

 

The Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License has been working to educate policymakers and help states improve their identification systems with more sophisticated state-issued ID. Assistance has also come from more sophisticated scanners, several versions of which are available for around $5000. These scanners can test both sides of a driver’s license, and save a bar owner the significant costs associated with selling alcohol to minors. These precautions also aid public safety by undermining the market for fake driver’s licenses.

 

The Coalition warns that cracking down on fake driver’s licenses may require more than just new technology and policy-makers’ attention. Andrew Meehan with the Coalition called the influx of fake driver’s licenses “a supply-and-demand problem” that won’t be resolved until the market for fake driver’s licenses dries up.  The Coalition’s director, Brian Zimmer, has warned that college students who engage with these websites must know they “are doing business with criminals.”

 

Author Bio:

Matthew Rudow is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

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