New Az hiring law spurs ID-theft fears
DANIEL GONZALEZ
The Arizona Republic
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/61611.php

PHOENIX - A crackdown on illegal immigration in Arizona is also expected to boost the state's already booming fake-document trade.

Authorities believe the industry will grow as illegal workers look for ways to circumvent the state's new hiring law and a new Bush administration hiring crackdown. The push for more documents with authentic numbers is expected to spur more identity theft.

The Phoenix metropolitan area, a major immigrant-smuggling hub, already has hundreds of operations that churn out fake green cards, Social Security cards and driver's licenses by the thousands, authorities say. Most of the fake documents are made with fake numbers. The chief customers are illegal immigrants who are trying to land jobs.

"This is a multimillion-dollar industry," said Lt. Giles Tipsword of the Phoenix Police Department's property crimes bureau.

Arizona's new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, requires companies to verify that workers are in this country legally, using a federal database. Colorado and Georgia have passed similar laws. And under new rules announced this month by the Bush administration, employers risk prosecution if they don't fire workers whose names and Social Security numbers don't match.

Local, state and federal authorities believe the changes will spur the people who make fake documents to adapt to meet demand. They expect to see fake-document makers morphing into large-scale criminal enterprises producing high-quality fraudulent documents made with real names and real Social Security numbers stolen from someone else. The federal database can't flag documents made with stolen identities, where the names and numbers match.

"There is a good potential for an increase in identity theft," said Leesa Berens Morrison, director of the Arizona Department of Homeland Security.

Arizona's identity-theft rate already is the highest in the nation, mainly because of employment fraud by illegal immigrants.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that administers the database - called the Basic Pilot Program - plans to roll out a new feature this month designed to reduce the number of unlawful workers trying to slip through the system using stolen identities, spokeswoman Marie Sebrechts said. The feature allows employers to electronically match photos on green cards with photos stored in a government database.

Now, buying bogus documents is easy and cheap. Within hours of crossing the border, illegal immigrants can buy green cards issued to permanent residents - allowing them to live and work in the U.S. - on street corners throughout the Phoenix area, authorities say.

Authorities say a "two-pack" - a green card and a Social Security card - costs as little as $70 on the street. A "three-pack" - a green card, driver's license and Social Security card - goes for $140 to $160. Those prices buy documents with randomly generated numbers. Sometimes the numbers invented by a manufacturer coincidentally belong to actual people.
It's more difficult and three to five times as expensive to buy fake documents made with government-issued ID numbers and a matching name stolen from someone else. Some numbers are stolen. Others belong to children or to people who died.

Producing fraudulent documents has become much easier because of the availability of relatively inexpensive technology, authorities say. All someone needs to make fraudulent documents is a computer, a scanner, a high-grade card printer, and a graphics software program.

Templates of driver's licenses, green cards and other documents can be bought on the black market, downloaded from the Internet or produced from scratch with a graphics software program.

"The risk is that experts in ID theft can turn around and use that skill to drain people's bank accounts and ruin their credit," said Orde Kittrie, an Arizona State University law professor who studies the link between immigration and crime. "They can also turn around and sell fake IDs to underage drinkers, unqualified drivers or even terrorists."