MVC security steps boost price of bogus licenses

Monday, March 21, 2011
BY JEAN RIMBACH
The Record
STAFF WRITER


The state Motor Vehicle Commission is facing a persistent challenge in its battle against document fraud: The demand for a fraudulently obtained driver's license has pushed the black-market price as high as $8,000.

An MVC clerk in East Orange was part of an alleged scheme to sell a genuine state license for $5,000. In Lodi, an employee and fellow conspirator allegedly split $6,000. In Atlantic County, an undercover officer bought one for $7,800.

In some ways, the steep price of an authentic license reflects the successes MVC has scored in its campaign to control and identify fraud. The state's digital license — and a soon-to-be unveiled upgrade — is tougher to obtain and to counterfeit. In addition, tighter security and tougher penalties have increased risks for lawbreakers.

"It's like anything else — when you can't get something … there's limited supply, the price goes up," said Joseph Vasil, an MVC counterfeit expert.

But it also shows there's more to do in a key battleground of the post-9/11 world, as well as a growing incentive for those, including agency employees, tempted to defraud the system.

"It's a constant battle but, yes it is — the temptation is out there, at $6,000 per transaction, the temptation is out there," said MVC Chief Administrator Raymond P. Martinez. "But we do believe that the overwhelming majority of our employees are good, honest, hardworking people."

The MVC has begun rolling out its latest weapon in the war on fraud: a new digital license that Martinez said "will be in the top tier of secure documents in the country." It's being piloted at some agencies and will be officially unveiled later this spring.

Still off in the future, though, are other tools to combat fraud: facial-recognition technology to search out people with licenses in multiple names and electronic scanning of the identity documents presented at MVC counters.

"The process and procedures [are] something we're working on," Martinez said. "I can tell you that we're better than most states, but there's room for improvement and we're committed to that improvement."

The non-profit Coalition for a Secure Driver's License ranks New Jersey highly on fraud prevention, most notably for its law-enforcement training, large team of investigators and ongoing prosecution efforts.

"In too many other states, identity fraud, through the means of driver's license fraud, goes undetected and unprosecuted, making it a risk-free crime," said Brian Zimmer, coalition president.


Duping and bribing

There are two ways to get an authentic New Jersey license fraudulently.

"Either you dupe a clerk or you bribe a clerk," said Vasil, coordinator of MVC's document-fraud training unit.

Possession of a state-issued license is invaluable to those who want to establish a fake identify.

"How much is it worth if it allows you to float freely through society?" Vasil said. "That's priceless if you look at it. That's something you can't put a price tag on. That's your freedom."

The commission has numerous weapons in its fraud-fighting arsenal.

Local law-enforcement officers or armed security guards are stationed in all 39 motor-vehicle agencies; cameras track movements of workers and customers, and mandatory training helps employees spot the counterfeit birth certificates, passports and other bogus identity documents that undocumented immigrants, criminals and suspended drivers use to meet the state's identification requirements for a license.

Three dozen motor-vehicle investigators probe fraud. Since 2004, a unit in the Attorney General's Office has been dedicated to prosecuting offenses, and some 18,000 law-enforcement officers have been trained in identification of phony documents and related criminal law.

But the system's most critical line of defense comes at the counter — the clerks who process thousands of document requests each day at the 39 facilities.

"They're very knowledgeable," Martinez said. "They are the ones that more likely than anything else are going to spot the bad documents and more likely than anything else they're going to alert our supervisors or investigators that something is not right with a particular employee."

MVC records tracking arrests are imprecise, and Martinez says that improving how the agency keeps statistics is on his to-do list. But motor-vehicle officials say arrests have been trending down as a result of increased security and fraud-fighting efforts.

Last year, there were 344 arrests based on information provided by MVC to law enforcement, 278 of them triggered by fraudulent documents and various fraud-related offenses. In 2004, the year digital licenses were first issued, there were 1,073 arrests. No comparable breakdown of offenses was available, but MVC officials said that in any given year, the majority of arrests will be fraud-related.

The records show that employees are sometimes complicit in the fraud. Since 2003, when an overhaul of the agency began, 132 motor-vehicle agency workers — including 11 employed by the private company that performs vehicle inspections — were arrested.


A variety of cases

At least 60 percent of the cases involved documents — driver's licenses most frequently, but also permits, registrations and titles. Roughly one in four arrests were either unrelated to agency business or could not be categorized with the information provided by MVC.

Of the seven MVC-employee arrests last year, five were related to driver's license transactions. Of 15 worker arrests in 2009, seven concerned license transactions.

Cases run the gamut. In December, a clerk at the MVC office in Lodi was charged in an alleged scheme to create and sell a license to an undercover investigator posing as an undocumented immigrant. Also last year, a Wayne motor vehicle employee was arrested with a Paterson man for allegedly attempting to produce a driver permit and processing an application in the name of a third party that contained false information.

A mother and daughter working at the Jersey City MVC office and a clerk in the North Bergen agency were arrested in 2009 for selling state licenses. The clerks allegedly issued them to undocumented immigrants as well as an undercover detective posing as one. Others arrested were brokers who allegedly arranged purchases and shared money.

And during a 2007 case involving the Cardiff agency in Atlantic County, there were indications a clerk allegedly got $2,500 of the $7,800 license fee paid by an undercover officer.

Jacqueline Smith, deputy chief of the major-crimes bureau in the Division of Criminal Justice, said the norm today for a fraudulent state-issued license is between $5,000 and $6,000, but she's seen them as high as $8,000.

Before digital licenses, Vasil said, the range was $50 to perhaps a high of $350.

"I think you're seeing an escalation in the cost of doing business," said Deputy Attorney General Phil Aronow, who helped develop the curriculum used to train police about document fraud.

"Hopefully the holes are getting smaller and smaller," Aronow said. "You have training for law-enforcement officers, so when you have people who are offering documents in a motor-vehicle stop or as part of another case, officers are recognizing they're fraudulent. … You also have the integration of the digital license [which is] much more difficult, much more complex, to obtain … and manufacture. And the risk of getting caught is higher."

Smith thinks employee involvement is slowing down — especially those doing a favor for a friend: "I think people realize it's not worth it."

But Vasil said: "It's still prevalent today as it was before. The only thing now is they have to get more creative how they do it."

Corruption at motor-vehicle agencies is a national issue. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators released its first comprehensive guide on internal fraud deterrence in October. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) embarked on an outreach and awareness campaign in 2009 to make motor-vehicle employees aware of the consequences of their actions.

"It's one of the only mechanisms where someone can get a genuine document so if we can deter anybody from doing that, we think that we'll have a bigger impact on the issue," said ICE Deputy Assistant Director James Spero, who noted that one corrupt Maryland employee working with a drug ring issued more than 250 licenses.

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