Published: Saturday, Nov. 20, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1B
Homeland Security agents and California DMV investigators have arrested four Sacramento-area men on charges of making and selling thousands of phony identification cards to undocumented immigrants.
For $120, you could buy a phony green card, Social Security card or a California driver's license on the streets of south Sacramento, investigators said. You could buy a set of all three for $250.
The suspects – undocumented immigrants with multiple identities – allegedly ran high-tech document mills out of their residences and the trunks of their cars.
Following a yearlong investigation, authorities seized computers, high quality printers, laminators, card stock and dozens of fake documents, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported.
"They seemed to be taking fraud to a new level," said Dan Lane, assistant special agent in charge of ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Sacramento.
According to the federal criminal complaint, one of the suspects, Javier Hernandez-Lopez, met an undercover agent at the parking lot of the Hacienda market on Franklin Boulevard and offered to set him up with his own counterfeiting franchise for $20,000.
Hernandez-Lopez, 39, allegedly offered the undercover agent – posing as a landscaper trying to get fake documents for his workers – software and training to produce 500 sets of documents.
According to the complaint, Hernandez-Lopez promised that the software could be used to make nearly any document imaginable: California and Mexican birth certificates and driver's licenses, "mica" (Spanish for green cards), vaccination records, Mexican voter ID cards. He said the software could also be used to produce phony licenses from Nevada, Oregon and Washington, according to the complaint.
Hernandez-Lopez allegedly offered to install the software on any computer and lowered the price to $15,000 if the undercover agent promised not to sell fake documents within a 40-minute drive of downtown Sacramento.
The suspects, who allegedly sold thousands of documents on Franklin Boulevard and in front of the Home Depot on Florin Road, could have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, Lane said. "We know they've been in business for at least a year. Javier has been removed from the U.S. on multiple occasions dating back eight years."
Also in the Sacramento County jail on charges of document fraud are Juan Hernandez-Lopez, 33, Javier's younger brother, who had been deported in 2003; Luis Eduardo Torres-Hernandez, 25, and Alejandro Bielma-Ortiz, 40. All four men were arrested Thursday and charged with manufacturing false identity and immigration documents. The maximum penalty is 15 years in prison for each count. Authorities did not spell out Friday how many counts each man faces.
Along with the Thursday morning arrests, federal agents who raided the document mills at two south Sacramento homes took two Mexican immigrants into custody on administrative immigration violations. They will be held pending a hearing before an immigration judge.
The phony California driver's licenses were copies of those issued before the Department of Motor Vehicles began issuing harder-to-counterfeit licenses in October, said Bruce Smallwood, the DMV's north area commander.
But even the older driver's licenses can be used by undocumented immigrants to "get a job, open up a bank account, start you off for state or federal benefits and make you appear like you're here legally," said Smallwood. "At this very moment, there's someone taking apart our new driver's license and trying to counterfeit it. It will be very difficult to do, but as the technology advances, it's inevitable."
Authorities suspect there are similar document mills in Sacramento using software and computers to churn out fakes. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out," said Lane. "It's a sign of the times."
The investigation began with a call to ICE's toll-free tip line: (866) 347-2423.
Drug traffickers and foreign smugglers use phony documents to get into and out of the United States and to shield undocumented immigrants from detection.
Though many of the fakes in the Sacramento case weren't particular good, "they were good enough to pass muster with the general public," said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice. "In L.A. you went to MacArthur Park if you wanted fake documents – in Sacramento you went to Franklin Boulevard."
