Is A Fake I.D. Worth It?

By Lora E. Como

Imagine you’re an enterprising Boston University student on the

west campus in the burgeoning days of the personal computer. You
decide to make full use of your computer and you begin to
manufacture false identification cards for your fellow students to pass
as the legal drinking age in the local establishments. Your progressive
operation soon spills over state lines, and suddenly federal agents are
knocking on your dorm room door.
Far-fetched? Not according to Boston University’s Associate
Dean of Students Herb Ross who related a story about a student who
was prosecuted under federal statutes for just that. He faced a federal
felony charge in court, was placed under house arrest, and adorned
with an ankle bracelet that tracked his movements.
Here in Massachusetts, the offense of falsely making, stealing,
altering, forging, or counterfeiting a license or identification card, or
assisting another in the same, falls under motor vehicle offenses,
Chapter 20, Section 24B, and is a felony. One would think that the
prospect of being slapped with a felony charge would be a strong
deterrent in the quasi-underground college market of fake I.D.’s, yet
the abundance of fake I.D.’s here at Boston University, and in the
greater Boston college scene, seems to oppose that theory. One only
need approach an idle crowd of students at Boston University’s George
Sherman Union on Commonwealth Avenue, and inevitably one student,
or maybe all of them, will admit to owning and occasionally using a
fake I.D. to enter clubs or purchase alcohol. In fact, the consensus
among students seems to be that fake I.D.’s are everywhere, even in a
decade that has seen a strong crackdown on alcohol consumption by
minors, and they are relatively easy to obtain.
When I spoke with Dean Ross, he dumped a shopping bag full of
an estimated 500 confiscated fake I.D.’s on the chair in front of me,
mostly driver’s licenses and student identification cards. A recent
police raid at one establishment netted over 100 false I.D.’s. And
when I asked the bouncer on duty at Harper’s Ferry on Brighton
Avenue how many fake I.D.’s he sees, he replied, “tons and tons.”
The abundance of fake I.D.’s, in many ways, is part of the
territory. Boston is a college town, and the demand is inevitably met
by supply. Today, one need look no further than the Internet to find
sites that advertise “novelty cards” that are purported to be valid
identification from the U.S. state or Canadian province of your
choosing at a cost of $35 to $70. The era of high-tech also gives just
about anyone with a little savvy the ways and means to cook up false
I.D.’s, and even duplicate security features such as the holograms that
are being introduced on many state licenses. (An “authentic
hologram” can be added to an Internet I.D. for an additional $59). But
the favored method for obtaining a fake I.D. and one of the riskier,
according to several BU students, seems to be the possession of a
genuine driver’s license issued by a state motor vehicle department
that contains a proper picture but false identification information.
Nicki, a BU student of legal drinking age, told of her trip to the
DMV in New Jersey where she presented her best friend’s information
and withstood a barrage of questions – for which she had prepared for
in advance - from the DMV about her identity. “That’s the best way,”
her friend Ross, 20, said, also a holder of a fake New York State
license.
Or take Scott, also 20, and holder of a genuine Rhode Island
license that contains the wrong information. When I asked about his
fears of getting caught he said, “As far as my ID goes, I’ve used it so
many times that I’m confident enough, and don’t get scared using it.
Maybe I’m too confident though…one time, when a cashier said that
my ID was fake and wasn’t going to sell to me, I argued with him and
told him he could call the police because it’s real. But I’d probably be
scared to use an ID that wasn’t near perfect.”
But the experience of Mike, now 21, is one that is foreign to most
BU students. As a minor, Mike’s I.D. was confiscated by the manager
of Blanchards, a package store in Brighton. Blanchards, in turn, was
busted by the police for selling alcohol to minors, but they turned over
their collection of fake I.D.’s to the police as a show of good faith.
Mike’s I.D. was in that collection, and he soon found himself in the
Dean’s office in front of two police officers, one from BU and the other
from the Boston PD. And then he found himself in front of a judge,
facing felony charges for the possession of a fake I.D. Mike said, “Had
I known that it was a felony, I never would have even thought about
getting one. No amount of beer is worth the danger of having a felony
on your record. I didn’t know it was a felony, because in Texas, where
I’m from, it’s not.” Herb Ross said that freshman are thoroughly
informed of the alcohol policy, and what happens if they violate that
policy, at the summer orientation, which he said 98% of freshman
attend.
So why don’t more kids fear the long arm of the law? According
to Joe, the bouncer at Harper’s Ferry, “Usually, they don’t get
prosecuted and they just go out and get another one.” And according
to the students, they themselves are careful to exercise a certain
amount of discretion in deciding which establishments to flash their
I.D.’s in and which to avoid altogether. According to Mike, “I think it
(the penalty) makes fake I.D. users much more careful – they only go
to those liquor stores and bars that they know they’ll get away with it.”
Scott though, differentiated between the actual use of a fake I.D. and
its possession. He said, “I know many people with fakes who hardly
ever use them because of the penalty. The penalty does discourage
people from using the I.D., but not from possessing one.”
And that differentiation seems to play a key role in how stiff a
penalty a student could possibly face. According to Dean Ross, the
problem “is serious in as much as we can make a connection between
possession and intention.” The mere possession of a fake I.D.
generally only warrants confiscation, whereas its actual use ups the
ante. The university generally regards the proliferation of fake I.D.’s as
an inevitable by-product of the age; students perceive a need to have
a fake I.D. out of the image attached, and the occasional glamour of
getting into a good club, and since just about everyone seems to have
one, then no one wants to be caught without one. Dean Ross only
shrugged at this mentality, seeming to acknowledge the futility of
fighting a raging fire with only a water bucket, but he did say “we’re
serious about it, the police are serious about it, if you ask me the
breakdown is in the courts.”
Dean Ross said that when a student actually makes it all the way
into the court system, the courts always exercise leniency due to
docket loads filled with other more serious, habitual offenders.
According to Ross, even when BU pushes for strict punishment, the
judges feel they cannot mete out the full penalty for a first-time
student offender when they ritually exercise leniency in the cases of
habitual felons. College students are also a huge source of revenue for
the city, and Boston does not want to appear as unfriendly to students
and drive them out of the city. “We’re serious but we’re not
draconian,” said Ross. And the Boston police detective with whom I
spoke said, “We’re not trying to lose scholarships, we just try to get
them to stop.”
He also said that many “small establishments fall through the
cracks but it’s only a matter of time before they get hit if we find out
they’re not cooperating with us. We bring them in front of the (liquor)
licensing board and it only takes one time in front of the board.” He
characterized The Kells on Brighton Avenue as “one of the better
establishments” because they have a photographing system in place
that stores pictures on record and can supply police with evidence of
the offense.
The consensus among the authorities seems to be that most
students have no idea of the risk they’re taking. Granted, most
students will only face confiscation, if that, but like those small
establishments that eventually get hit, some students occasionally find
themselves up against felony charges and in need of lawyer. And once
a felony charge sticks, students can seriously jeopardize their future,
especially if they have plans for law school or federal service. “And for
what?” asked Sergeant St. Hilaire of the BUPD. “To get in a bar?”