(RoyalPatriot.com )- On Friday, US Customs and Border Protection officers in Indianapolis announced it had seized over 1,200 counterfeit driver’s licenses originating out of Hong Kong.
The CBP detained three shipments with contents described as “Game Card.” The first shipment which was on its way to Chicago contained 358 fake driver’s licenses. The other two shipments, destined for addresses in New York, contained 482 licenses and 367 licenses.
Counterfeit licenses from more than twenty states were found in the shipments. Among the states included were California, Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, and South Carolina.
Most of the driver’s licenses were for college-age adults and some pictures on the licenses were used multiple times under different names and states.
While fake IDs like these could be used for underage individuals looking to buy alcohol, of greater concern to Customs and Border Protection is the use of fake licenses by “criminal enterprises.”
According to LaFonda Sutton-Burke, director of CBP’s Chicago field operations, criminal enterprises often use these fraudulent identity cards for identity theft, worksite enforcement, and fraud related to immigration-related crimes such as human smuggling and human trafficking.
In addition to criminal enterprises, Sutton-Burke said terrorism is also of great concern as fake IDs could be used by those seeking to minimize scrutiny from travel screening measures.
In an operation conducted from early December to January 10, Cincinnati Customs and Border Protection seized over two thousand fraudulent international driver’s licenses and paired booklets being shipped out of Florida and New York.
The ongoing operations to crack down on counterfeit identification are coordinated between the Department of Homeland Security and a special unit within Customs and Border Protection dedicated to analyzing documentation.
