Hayward, California woman charged in mass thefts of IDs
Henry K. Lee / Copyright San Francisco Chronicle.
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Oakland Police Dept Mug Shot: Mishel Caviness, Hayward, accused of
running a large-scale operation devoted to stealing people's identities.
HAYWARD, CALIFORNIA -- A Hayward woman has been charged with numerous felony counts for allegedly running an identity-theft operation that created fake Social Security and California identification cards, checks and credit cards. Mishel Caviness, 40, was arrested after an investigation by Oakland police and the U.S. Secret Service.
The probe began when an Oakland city employee reported in January that someone was fraudulently cashing her checks, according to police Officer Ryan Goodfellow and court records. Caviness was identified with the help of surveillance-camera footage from Bay Area stores, police said.
A search of her apartment on the 21000 block of Foothill Boulevard in Hayward last week uncovered a printing operation capable of making fake checks and credit cards, police said. Also found were 900 blank credit cards, personal information belonging to as many as 1,000 people, blank checks and computers, police said.
Alameda County prosecutors charged Caviness with forgery, identity theft, forgery of a driver's license and grand theft. She has a previous conviction for welfare fraud and told police that she is disabled and unemployed. She is being held at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin in lieu of $325,000 bail.
SOURCE http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/16/BAPP1JGPTT.DTL#ixzz1MotxGM5R Page C - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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THE LUCRATIVE PHONY ID BUSINESS---TEXAS STYLE
NORTH BERGEN, NJ -- July 21, 2006 -- Pelcastre brothers, Angel and Jorge, Dallas, Texas, were a walking threat to US national security, expert document forgers who, for a few thousand dollars, could give anyone a new identity, L/E said. The Texas brothers turned a NJ hotel room into a business office and were readying a massive cache of fake Social Security cards for delivery to a local NJ identity broker.
The Texas brothers were a "one-stop shop" for a myriad of fake US documents, including birth certificates, Social Security cards, driver's licenses for any state in the US, passports and resident alien cards, said state police. Officers happened upon two cars bearing Texas plates in a NJ hotel parking lot. Authorities wouldn't identify the NJ hotel by name for fear it would spark retribution from savage drug cartels operating in the US.
The Texas brothers were followed to a NJ office supply store nearby where they purchased computer supplies. Officers then followed the Texans to a NJ storage facility in Secaucus, NJ, where the Texans loaded several boxes into a car. One of them stood lookout. L/E approached the Texas brothers when they returned to the NJ hotel and questioned them separately. The Texas brothers consented to a search.
Police recovered laminating sheets with built-in security features, pages of blank documents waiting for fake names and information, finished documents, computers and software to create the fake IDs.
All told, the haul was worth about $500,000 on the street. Police also recovered $6,000 in cash, which was the first payment from a NJ fake document broker for a shipment of 500 fake Social Security cards. ####
