phony document used to obtain a genuine one. Generally speaking, criminals will counterfeit a document that has little, if any, security features and then use that to get far more secure legitimate documents.
In most cases, a birth certificate contains next to no security features, so it has become an ideal breeder document. Criminals will create a fake birth certificate to obtain a genuine driver's license, then use those two documents to get a legitimate passport. Once you've got that first authentic document, you're pretty much on your way. After all, the right documents allow people to get unauthorized benefits, to land jobs they're not entitled to, to gain illegal entry into a country, to construct new identities, and to fraudulently obtain credit cards and loans.
There's always been a lot of Mom and Pop document fraud, and there still is, but there are actual document syndicates today that are as well-organized as major corporations. There's actually a standard counterfeit package that immigrants buy that consists of a resident alien card, Social Security card, and driver's license. Gangs in big cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles sell these ensembles on the street. The criminals will brazenly approach foreigners in broad daylight and ask, "What do you need?" Estimates are that counterfeit and illegally-obtained documents cost the country something on the order of $25 billion a year. In late 1998, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents raided two storage facilities in Los Angeles and rounded up more than two million counterfeit identity documents. The agency estimated that the street value of that paper was in excess of $80 million. Hardly chump change.
GOODBYE PEN AND INK MEN
Technology has made life so much easier for the counterfeiter. Years ago, a document counterfeiter was known as a "pen and ink man." He worked meticulously by hand and needed steady nerves. That's all changed. To get an idea of the impact of technology on crime, consider the color copier. In late 1977, Xerox invented the machine called the Xerox 6500 Color Copier. And it was quite a machine. At that time, it was considered the most advanced copier in the world. People were reproducing full-color documents in a matter of seconds. All a forger had to do was lay a real check on the machine, close the cover, push a button, and out would come a duplicate check that looked just like the real thing. Forgers loved the Xerox 6500 so much so that they cashed more than $365 million worth of phony checks color-copied by the machine.
Twenty years later, it's an antique. These days, forgers interested in a wide array of documents use a product called the color laser digital copier, again found everywhere. The quality of the color copies produced by this machine is truly remarkable. Nearly anything on paper can be acceptably reproduced: gift certificates, traveler's checks, birth certificates, college transcripts, car titles, and even money. It can reproduce such magnificent colors that you couldn't tell the real thing from the fake even in a side-by-side comparison. Color copiers are so proficient at reproducing dollar bills that, in most cases, the bogus bills will go through a vending machine. They're so realistic that you find them in ATMs.
If you want to stop document fraud, you have to start building layers of security features into the documents. Because I'm in this business, I even have an array of features on my company letterhead. If Sam Donaldson tried to scan one of my letters the way I scanned his, he'd be in for a rude shock: "void" would show up all over the document.
YOU DON'T NEED A STORK
To counterfeiters, the birth certificate is one of the choicest documents of all, because so much can be accomplished with it. Since it's accepted by just about every government agency as proof of one's identity and citizenship, it's the key to getting a host of benefits and other documents. Thousands of state and local registrars' offices issue birth certificates in the United States. Many of them produce more than one type. Also, states have revised their certificates many times over the years, and both the old and the new variations are all in circulation. Add this all up, and there could be more than ten thousand variations of the U.S. birth certificate in existence. And that's great news to a counterfeiter. The more renditions of a document, the harder it is for anyone to say that the one that you have is false.
Some birth certificates have very