CBS4 Investigates Fake Insurance Cards (Illegals-Denver

May 19, 2005 9:24 am US/Mountain
The CBS4 Investigates team recently used hidden cameras to find out how easy it is to get a phony car insurance card. In the process they found that there doesn't appear to be any real enforcement against people who are using counterfeit cards and trying to pass them off as the real thing. An insurance agent told CBS4 the phony cards translate into higher costs for everyone. The following is investigative reporter Brian Maass' report.

What's the point of "must see"?
I have known this to be a fact for years. Victor Davis Hanson describes the norm with illegals and accidents in one of his interviews.

It is much easier to force the innocent to pay additional premiums than to arrest and prosecute the criminals.

And government wonders why the overwhelming majority of citizens are pissed off!

The shocker of this report is not the phony documents, but that "govt officials" openly state a "so what" attitude. This is the first time I've ever seen government bureaucrats take this open pro-illegal stance.

Until now, employees like that local Border Patrol Chief (Nicely ?) in Arizona say they are vigorously enforcing the laws...while they are reported to be doing the opposite--as with recent efforts to sabotage the Minutemen Project and its results.

Hold the Phone! I don't know what kind of "enforcement" you guys want. As someone employed in the law enforcement field in Colorado, I can tell you how this works. When a police officer pulls someone over, they ask for license, registration, and proof of insurance. The officer will "clear the driver," meaning running the name through the computer to see if the driver's license is valid and to make sure that there are no arrest warrants. He will also examine the insurance card. If it looks fake, he can confiscate it or investigate further, although not much investigation is available at 11:00 p.m. on the side of the road. There is no master database available to make sure that the person actually has insurance, or that the card is real. The only way to do that would be to require some type of "tamper-proof" (yeah, right) card, or to require all insurance companies to participate in some kind of master database accessible to officers 24 hours a day. This would be very expensive and could probably be circumvented anyway. At any rate, it would involve much more government involvement in commercial activity.

I myself have had obviously forged insurance cards presented to me on numerous occasions. Luckily, this happened during working hours and I was able to call the insurance company and determine that the card was forged. The persons presenting these cards (about half of whom were foreign nationals), were all charged with uttering a forged instrument.

It goes without saying that I don't work in the City and County of Denver, though.

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