[Poster note - I took the liberty of bolding a few sentences to highlight important parts]


DMV's fraud busts hit Latinos
Crime - The agency starts calling police for suspicious documents, mostly affecting people with Latino names
FACTBOX

• By the numbers
Monday, October 08, 2007
ESMERALDA BERMUDEZ
The Oregonian Staff

Workers at Oregon's Driver and Motor Vehicle Services have turned in nearly 200 people to police for suspicious documentation, an effort that overwhelmingly singled out Latinos.

This summer, the DMV changed a long-standing policy: Rather than simply refuse service to customers suspected of presenting phony or altered documents to obtain licenses or identification, employees began to alert police.

From June through August, 140 people were turned in to police -- roughly 94 percent of them with Latino names, according to DMV records obtained by The Oregonian.
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Oregon State Police and police agencies in Portland, Beaverton and Albany recieved the most referrals. Of those 61 cases, 13 people have been convicted of crimes, and a dozen others are pending prosecution, according to police agencies surveyed by the newspaper. Three others were cited but not charged with a crime.

For the remaining 33 cases, some were arrested but no charges were filed or their charges were later dismissed; some were never arrested or charged; or authorities could not find a case file for the person.

In one case, an Oregon City woman was arrested and charged with a felony only to find later that her identification was legitimate.

State officials say the new approach is a work in progress.

"We, too, are in the process of analyzing this to see what have been the results," said Lorna Youngs, administrator of Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicle Services.

She said the agency will evaluate the new procedure after it has been in effect for at least six months. The review will include how DMV employees followed protocol and what police agencies did with referrals. If Latinos make up the bulk of suspects, state officials will investigate further, Youngs said.

"We want to know, is this ultimately going to be a deterrent of fraud?"


But that goal becomes tricky considering the vast sources of foreign identification that arrive at DMV counters, said Portland attorney Angel Lopez, who represented the Oregon City woman.

"Perhaps a large portion of people that are offending with bogus documents happen to be Latinos," he said.

"But it's equally plausible that Latinos are being ferreted out in the first place because clerks do not understand the validity of documents that seem strange and foreign."
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Youngs said she does not know why so many of those suspected of fraudulent activity by DMV employees appear to be Latino.

"If that is an accusation people could level, we would want to address it because that was the last thing that was intended," she said.

Fighting fraud

A pilot of the policy tested last year in six field offices proved successful, Youngs said. So with support from law enforcement agencies, the DMV launched it statewide.

It was one of the only alternatives left for a division charged with "providing identification for the world," but with "few tools at our disposal" to curb fraud, Youngs said.

A few years ago, the agency asked legislators to let it confiscate questionable identification, turn it over to police and leave the customer to appeal to authorities if documents were real.

But the measure died in Salem.

"The message from the Legislature was DMV should not police investigations" and confiscate documents, said DMV spokesman David House.

The new approach is intended to send a clear message to customers tempted to meddle in fraud: Do not shop around. Any DMV worker will report suspects, rather than give them time to hunt for an office with a lax employee.

Already, suspects who might otherwise have gone unchecked have been caught: they confess to buying Social Security cards in Montana, Los Angeles and Hillsboro; and they admit traveling from places such as Nevada and California, where illegal immigrants are prohibited from getting state identification.
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Dubious documents include Social Security cards, bank statements, consulate cards and out-of-state driver's licenses as well as identification from Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Costa Rica and other countries.

The crackdown has caused concern among critics, including the Mexican Consulate, immigrant-rights groups and lawyers, especially when it comes to cases where they contend the DMV wrongfully accused customers.

"Before they take steps that affect people's lives, they should look at other solutions and have other methods to verify documents," said David Simon, acting consul of the Mexican Consulate in Portland. The consulate has met with state officials and has asked the DMV to rely on the consulate to validate certain forms of identification before calling police.

Some cases dropped

Two weeks after the new policy was implemented, a Eugene woman from Nayarit, Mexico, entered a Eugene DMV office to obtain an identification card. Police records show this was her second attempt after an office in Springfield rejected her Mexican birth certificate.

"When they said they couldn't give it to me, I called my mother and asked her to send me two more certified copies," said the 33-year-old woman, whose name is not being published because she is in the country illegally. "I thought then I would be fine."

But the pink color, chipped ink and misplaced signature of the birth certificate still did not pass the test. And an hour later, what seemed like a routine errand turned into a police interrogation, followed by citations for forgery and criminal possession of a forged instrument, and later, a court date.

"I kept telling them, 'This is not my fault. I don't have anything false,' " the woman said.

The DMV suspects illegal immigration is tied to the problem of questionable documents, House said. But the agency does not ask about immigration status. Police agencies surveyed by The Oregonian said that immigration is not their primary focus, rather it's the criminal aspect of fraud.

A month later, a similar scene unfolded in Clackamas County where Maria Vasquez -- who had legally entered the country on a visa just weeks before -- sought an identification card. When her Mexican birth certificate was called into question, she was arrested and jailed, said Lopez, her attorney.
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Later, prosecutors dropped both cases.

In a letter addressed to Vasquez's immigration attorney, Youngs invited Vasquez to visit the DMV to get her identification card. She has not taken the offer, according to records.

In Eugene, the woman who was rejected twice said she tried to get identification once more but was denied.

DMV officials say even if the suspect's case is dropped in court, that still does not prove the document is legitimate. So if that same customer returns with the same identification, it is likely the person will be rejected.

Working with Mexico

Briefed on the matter, Attorney General Hardy Myers encouraged the Mexican Consulate to continue discussions with the DMV.

"It's a legitimate goal to reduce or avoid the number of instances where a Mexican national might be mistakenly detained because the DMV believes what is being tendered is false," he said.

Youngs said the Latino community might need to become more educated about legal ways to get Oregon identification -- such as the Matricula Consular, a card issued by the Mexican Consulate as a form of ID.

Or perhaps DMV employees require more training before they call police, she said.

New field office employees now participate in an eight-hour fraud detection course, followed by annual reviews from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators and ongoing updates from DMV's internal fraud warning system.

In the end, it comes down to "a pair of eyes looking at a document," Youngs said.

The role of citing or arresting someone falls on the police officer who responds to the call, said Sgt. Paul Wandell with theBeaverton Police Department. The agency took about a dozen calls from the DMV within a three-month period this summer.

"It's a fairly simple black-and-white issue," Wandell said about catching bad identification. "It's critical that DMVs issue legally obtained identification. That's all they're trying to do."

Esmeralda Bermudez: 503-294-5961; ebermudez@news.oregonian.com

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