Thread: Man indicted in phony ID papers scheme

From The Washington Times, a truly great newspaper...

Man indicted in phony ID papers scheme

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 22, 2005

A Mexican citizen has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Colorado in a multimillion dollar scheme that saw the distribution of millions of phony identification documents -- including Social Security cards and driver's licenses -- to illegal aliens throughout the United States.
Pedro Castorena-Ibarra, 42, was accused in an indictment handed up this week in U.S. District Court in Denver of maintaining franchises in dozens of U.S. cities to distribute the counterfeit documents from his Guadalajara home.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman Dean Boyd yesterday said authorities have not yet determined how many phony documents were sent to illegal aliens in the United States over the course of the five-year conspiracy, but said the number could be in the "millions and millions." He said 3 million phony papers and cards worth more than $20 million are thought to have been shipped to Los Angeles alone.
The indictment identified Castorena-Ibarra as the "mastermind" of a criminal organization that routed -- for a fee -- phony resident alien cards, Social Security cards, Mexico matricula consular ID cards and driver's licenses from various states in Mexico and the United States.
Now listed as a federal fugitive, the Justice Department will seek Castorena-Ibarra's extradition.
"This criminal organization represents one of the largest and most sophisticated document fraud rings ever uncovered -- so much so that it set up franchises in most major U.S. cities and counterfeited dozens of types of documents," said Marcy Forman, who heads investigations for ICE.
"Fraudulent documents can be provided to terrorists and other criminals, posing a major homeland security vulnerability," she said.
Mr. Boyd said the scheme began in Guadalajara in early 1998 and continued through February, during which Castorena-Ibarra conspired with others to manufacture and distribute the phony documents. He said investigators identified Castorena-Ibarra as the ringleader and later discovered he was operating through associates in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Winston-Salem, N.C., Lincoln, Neb., Des Moines, Iowa, Albuquerque, N.M., and Denver.
He said Castorena-Ibarra's brother-in-law, Gerardo Deleon-Trejo, was named last year as the leader of the Denver cell. Deleon-Trejo was arrested at his Denver apartment in June 2004, where authorities said a counterfeit identity document-manufacturing laboratory was found and seized.
Also indicted this month in Denver was Francisco Javier Miranda-Espinosa, arrested in January by ICE agents at his Denver apartment, where authorities seized several hundred counterfeit identity cards and document-making implements, including a silk-screen printing press.
Immediately following the arrest, Mr. Boyd said, a search of an Aurora, Colo., storage unit uncovered 21 silk-screen printing templates and negatives used to produce bulk quantities of counterfeit identity document laminates complete with security seals and holograms.
Miranda-Espinosa was convicted in Los Angeles in 2000 for manufacturing and distributing counterfeit identity cards and served 36 months in prison. He was deported to Mexico on his release, but re-entered the United States. He pleaded guilty July 11 to unlawful re-entry and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Mr. Boyd said the ICE investigation also uncovered ties by Castorena-Ibarra to Texas, where he fronted a phony document-manufacturing site in San Antonio that involved his brothers, Alfonso and Francisco Javier, and to Winston-Salem, N.C., where a counterfeit identity document-manufacturing laboratory was found.
He also said an undercover informant who worked for Castorena-Ibarra's Denver operation but had been deported to Mexico in January 2004 after serving time in prison later met with Castorena-Ibarra in Guadalajara, where he was told he could return to the Denver operation "as a reward for serving his time honorably."
The informant, Mr. Boyd said, later recorded numerous telephone conversations with Castorena-Ibarra and other organization members as they set up a new operation in Glendale, Colo.
Mr. Boyd said the undercover investigation identified numerous additional organization members, more than 50 of whom have been arrested, and led to the closure of several counterfeit identity document-manufacturing laboratories. He said agents also seized 20 computerized counterfeit identity document-manufacturing laboratories, tens of thousands of blank counterfeit identity documents, one silk-screen printing press, 21 silk-screen printing templates, 21 computers, nine handguns and more than $100,000 in U.S. currency.

Great news!

Now hopefully they use those computers and templates to round up the illegals using the fake id's.