Criminals use extremes to hide their true identity

By Milton J. Valencia
December 03, 2013
The Boston Globe


US District Court Records
Teresa Araujo Martinez allegedly had her fingerprints altered by Danilo Montero Ramirez.


The doctor from the Dominican Republic allegedly arrived prepared with his surgical kit containing scalpels, tweezers, and scissors, among other cutting instruments. He brought a small wooden operating table with him, as well.

His nurse, Teresa Araujo Martinez, allegedly brought all the painkillers their patient would need , more than 26 types, including Percocet and Oxycodone.

But this was no operating room, and this was no typical surgery. Authorities say the doctor, Danilo Montero Ramirez, and his nurse arrived at a Peabody apartment last month to perform a disturbing, underground operation: to alter the fingerprints and conceal the identity of a convicted criminal, as they have for others including immigrants who illegally entered the country and were trying to conceal their identity.

Ramirez, 61, and Martinez, 40, were charged in federal court with conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. They are being held without bail. They have not yet entered pleas and face up to 20 years in prison, as well as deportation if convicted.

The person they had come to perform surgery on was actually a federal informant.

The pair’s arrest also demonstrates a far broader concern for law enforcement officials: They have patients who would be willing to pay as much as $4,000 and undergo the surgery to hide their identity.

“They’ll go to no ends to go undetected, and that’s the problem here,” said Bruce M. Foucart, special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in Boston, which cover New England.

“This is becoming a pervasive problem,”he said. “It’s becoming a pervasive problem here in New England.”

In October, in one example, federal agents took custody of a Boston man who had altered his fingerprints. The man had been arrested in Revere on charges of selling heroin to an undercover state trooper and he allegedly gave a false identification.

Working with the FBI, officials were ultimately able to identify the man as Jose Dario Paulino Pimental, 39, a native of the Dominican Republic who had already been deported for crimes including possession of a gun and criminal mischief. He could now face charges in US District Court in Boston of illegal reentry into the United States after deportation, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Though Pimental was ultimately charged, Foucart said the concern of people hiding their identity has grown to the point that the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division alerted his agency and Boston police earlier this year that it was seeing an increasing number of cases from the Boston area, specifically within the Dominican community.

Law enforcement officials say they still have multiple ways of confirming someone’s identity and that they can quickly tell when someone’s fingerprints have been altered. But they also said that Pimental’s case and others like it show the depths to which criminals will go to avoid detection.

“That reflects a significant level of commitment to one’s cause,” said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney’s office, who said the defendants are typically involved in serious, drug-related crimes.

Foucart also noted that the underground surgeries trigger public health concerns on their own, emphasizing the focus on the doctors who perform the surgeries. Three years ago, federal prosecutors from Boston charged another doctor from the Dominican Republic, Jose Elias Zaiter-Pou, with performing the surgeries. He was sentenced to a year in prison.

“They are the instruments of this,” Foucart said. “These are people who are criminals, and this is the problem here. They could be national security threats, public safety threats. . . . We just don’t know who they are.”

In Ramirez’s case, Special Agent Sean Rafferty of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in court records that he had learned Ramirez had been performing the surgeries in the Dominican Republic.

But, Rafferty said in the court records, he recently learned through the confidential informant that Ramirez, a lawful permanent resident in the United States, would be visiting the area and had agreed to perform the surgery for the informant.

In taped phone and in-person conversations with the informant, Ramirez can allegedly be heard describing how he performs the surgery. He described how he cuts out the middle portion of each fingertip and then sews the cut surfaces back together. He leaves the stitches in for about 10 days, though the pain is at its greatest for the first three. Martinez works with him and allegedly prescribes painkillers.

The informant set up a fake surgery with Ramirez and Martinez, according to court records; they were arrested as they were preparing for the operation.

After his arrest, Ramirez allegedly admitted to authorities that he altered the fingertips of about six people, including Martinez, the nurse.

Authorities later determined that Martinez is from the Dominican Republic and had been using a false name, Carmen Reyes.

She allegedly told law authorities that she illegally entered the country. She had been arrested four years ago for distributing cocaine, but skipped bail and had her fingerprints altered.

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