‘Unbeatable’ Fake IDs Become Booming Underground Business

While digital identity crimes are an ever-present threat, fake physical IDs have never gone away.

And as The New York Times (NYT) reported recently, these IDs — long-prized by underage folks who want to hit the bars before they’re legally allowed — are only growing more sophisticated.

That’s because continual upgrades to license designs means that the type of fake ID students once put together themselves in their dorms no longer past muster, the report said. Now, counterfeiters are putting together fake IDs that include holograms, bar codes and laser engraving that can trick bar owners’ electronic scanners.

The counterfeiters, the report added, put up websites listing replicas by state, take payments in cryptocurrency, and build fake IDs with equipment and materials they promise can fool the sharpest-eyed bouncers.

These sites, NYT said, list licenses with “scientific specificity,” including details about card thickness in micrometers, laminates, and security enhancements like embedded data chips, ultraviolet features and coded magnetic strips.

“They are unbeatable,” Martin Sheil, 62, who owns the Josie Woods Pub in Greenwich Village, told NYT.

The report noted that Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport last month confiscated 984 counterfeit licenses in less than a week. Steve Bansbach, a federal Customs and Border Protection spokesman, told the newspaper that there’s a larger threat here than just kids getting served alcohol: the idea that these cards could be used in identity theft and human trafficking.

PYMNTS discussed the problem of fake IDs last year with Intellicheck CEO Bryan Lewis, who noted that advanced technologies are vulnerable to threats, as voice prints, face prints and facial recognition can all be mimicked with artificial intelligence (AI).

At the same time, he added, treating everyone like a criminal to filter out the small number of people who actually are criminals can inject friction into the verification process and harm businesses. The key, Lewis told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, is to let people prove they are who they say they are in the easiest way.

“If you can tell that a government-issued ID is real, that’s the most important step,” Lewis said. “After that, you can use the face or something else, because now we’ve tied a face or voice to an identity — and you can create an immutable token.”

Lewis said his company’s data shows that 1% of activity moving through title companies involves a fake ID. The same percentage applies to the bank branch setting, where someone could open an account to move money without a credit pull. It’s the reason account takeovers are one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, he added.