The United States has once again seized tens of thousands of licenses, the lion's share of them are fake driver's licenses, which are supplied to America mainly by China, as well as South Korea and the UK, writes Vinograd.us.
In the first six months of 2020, US Customs and Borden Protection (CBP) officers at Chicago O'Hare International Airport alone seized nearly 20,000 fake US driver's licenses and other documents, according to the report.
Ralph Pichkirilli, acting director of the CBP office in Chicago, noted that the forgeries, made primarily on people in their twenties and older, look «very realistic.»
“Such fake driver's licenses can ultimately lead to disastrous consequences,” he also said in a statement. «Criminal organizations use fake IDs to avoid drawing attention to their illegal activities.»
Dallas, Texas is also seeing an increase in attempts to smuggle in fake documents, with at least 2,000 fake ID cards found by officers checking international parcels and flights since 2019.
The fact that attempts to import fake IDs into the United States are becoming an increasingly widespread crime, a representative of the CBP office in Dallas announced last April, specifying that the bulk of fakes in Texas are at Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
Director of the regional office of CBP Dallas Timothy Lemo also noted that fake IDs pose a danger not only to the country as a whole, but also to the buyer of such an ID, regardless of his intentions: in order to make a forgery, you need to disclose your personal information to criminals located abroad.
The situation is so serious that Dallas CBP employees have already begun partnering with local universities to educate students about the exact risks of revealing personal information on the Internet to obtain a fake license.
Kentucky CBP agents are also seeing an increase in counterfeiting: this year alone, they have intercepted about 3,000 fake licenses that are valid in the United States, and more than 3,000 so-called blank cards that are easy to fake. The unfinished fakes were to be delivered to New York.
One of the packages was for a New Yorker who had been convicted of child abuse several times. Law enforcement officials believe that the recipient of the illegal cargo could get acquainted and start a relationship with minors, promising them fake IDs.
“Only a small part of the main problems associated with fake identity documents look like this: identity theft, immigration fraud such as human smuggling and human trafficking, these documents can also be used by persons associated with terrorism …”, — said Thomas Man, director of the CBP office in Louisville, commenting on the situation.
