If only all fake IDs looked like this one, then we wouldn’t have to work as hard keeping teens from DESTROYING THEMSELVES.
When I first entered college in New York, I used a scan of my Chinese visa, a little Photoshop expertise and a laminator to give me a convincing enough “Chinese Resident Card” with a fake birth date to pass as someone 21+. It worked because I was a girl and convincingly Chinese enough to not have any other ID with me. Not surprisingly, my little operation hardly holds a candle to the real Chinese fake id-making professionals.
The Washington Post has a scaremongering tale about Chinese companies that now provide fake drivers licenses to undergrads determined to party.
Just wire money to “the Chinese guy.”
“He’s like some sort of genius in China,” said a 19-year-old for whom Eney bought shots that night. “Every kid in Annapolis has one of his licenses.”
The “Chinese guy” — whose e-mail address is passed around on college campuses and among high school kids — is actually a Chinese company that mails untold thousands of fake driver’s licenses to the United States. They have been turning up in states from coast to coast.
To the naked eye — even the practiced eye of most bartenders and police officers — the counterfeits look perfect. The photo and physical description are real. So is the signature. The address may be, too. The holograms are exact copies, and even the bar code can pass unsophisticated scans.
The IDs seem to all come from one Nanjing-based company called PARTiTek and are shipped to the States via jewelry or shoe boxes.
The shoe box that arrived in the mail from China contained a cheap pair of shoes.
“We thought the Chinese guy had ripped us off,” said the 19-year-old who shared shots with [Craig] Eney the night he died.
Until then, the transaction had gone smoothly. She made first contact through an e-mail address supplied by the acquaintance. A prompt e-mail reply laid out the deal.
“It was $300 if you just wanted one” license, she said. “It was $200 [each] for two and $75 [each] if you wanted more than 20.”
Photos, names, signatures and physical descriptions were e-mailed to the address. Money was collected from friends, many of them former classmates at the Severn School, from which Eney also had graduated, and wired to an address in China specified in the e-mail.
“You can pick from a list of about 10 states,” she said. “I heard that the Pennsylvania license was the best one.”
The shoe box with postmarks from China arrived in a matter of days. After initial consternation, she flipped over one of the shoes and ripped open the sole. Out tumbled 22 brand-new, visually perfect driver’s licenses.
“And my friend’s license came in this,” she said recently, flipping to a picture on her iPhone. It showed a necklace box with a sparkling brooch.
Of course, there’s heavier security implications for being able to procure counterfeit licenses – considering you can get on a plane with one (something the 9/11 hijackers did). And it is a potentially huge problem, with over 1700 being intercepted by Chicago customs alone according to the Chicago Tribune.
But strangely enough, neither the Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune dedicates much time to this actual threat, preferring to focus on underaged drinking teens killing themselves by – in the aforementioned Eney’s case – “gunning it” away from cops that stop them on the road for not wearing a helmet. This apparently makes these Chinese-made IDs “so good they’re dangerous.”
Really, Washington Post? We’re blaming China for teenagers who decide to break the law (by drinking underage), then break the law again (by motorcycling drunk) and then break the law again (by trying to escape a cop)?
Incidentally, of all product safety scares, this has to be the first time I’ve ever seen a Chinese company blamed for making their stuff too high-quality.
