Can you cite any specific and noteworthy examples to support that assertion?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
no problem:
Hawaii has had ethnically driven culture of ID forgery problems for generations. All you need is some bribery money.
Posted on: Friday, December 3, 2004
State-of-the-art fake-ID ‘factories’ uncovered
• Minimize your risk
By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer
State and federal law enforcement officers have uncovered four of the largest and most elaborate fake-ID “factories” ever on O’ahu and are urging the public to safeguard personal information for the holiday season, the perfect time for thieves to steal identities.
“Hawai’i is ripe for the pickings,” said Capt. Ed Nishi, head of the Honolulu Police Department’s Property Crime Division. He spoke at a news conference yesterday. “People see this as an easy way to make money. This is the crime of choice right now.”
The four “fraud factories” were found by patrol officers and detectives with the Honolulu Police Department’s financial crimes unit in Waikiki hotel rooms and other locations in Waikiki and the downtown area during October and November. Based on the evidence recovered from the sites, police said that hundreds of people were victims.
Police said they are working to determine if the four sites were independently run operations or if they were working together.
“There was just so much stuff (evidence from the four sites) that we are still sifting through,” said Lt. Pat Tomasu, head of HPD’s Financial Fraud Unit.
Each factory was equipped with laptops, scanners, digital cameras, plastic card printers, laminating machines, paper cutters and file folders filled with stolen personal information like Social Security, bank account, and credit card numbers.
The factories churned out hundreds of fake Hawai’i driver’s licenses, state identification cards, personal checks and, in at least one instance, a Costco card. Police also found evidence that crooks were trying to duplicate U.S. and foreign passports.
“Illegal aliens and terrorists can come in and assume the identities of other people,” said Lt. Pat Tomasu, head of HPD’s Financial Fraud Unit. “They can open up accounts, finance all their cohorts, and run under the radar. That’s the worst-case scenario.”
Police recovered hundreds of fake Hawai’i driver’s licenses and templates for other forms of identification cards from the four locations.
The fake IDs can be used for all manner of illegal activity, especially financial fraud involving the cashing of someone else’s check or the use of someone else’s credit card number.
Personal information, such as Social Security and bank account numbers, is stolen from mail, store receipts, Internet purchases, thefts, car break-ins and burglaries.
The thieves print the stolen information onto fake IDs that feature their pictures, creating an ID to match the stolen credit card or the counterfeit check.
Police declined to disclose the number of people arrested in connection with the factories nor would they say how many similar setups have been found this year or in recent years.
Yesterday, police displayed more than $13,000 worth of equipment confiscated recently and said that investigations are aimed at identifying key figures in all four operations.
One of the problems with stopping the spread of such operations is that anyone with basic computer skills, access to equipment, and personal information can start up a “fraud factory.”
Most of the material needed to make fake IDs and counterfeit checks, from the plastic cards to the “Hawai’i” holograms, can be bought at office supply stores and over the Internet, police said.
“Unless you absolutely know what you’re looking for they can pass” for the real thing, said U.S. Secret Service Assistant Special Agent in Charge Rick Walkinshaw.
According to figures from the Federal Trade Commission and Honolulu police:
There were 649 reported cases of identity theft in Hawai’i last year out of 214,905 reported nationally. Hawai’i ranked 25th out of 50 states in reported identity thefts per capita.
Industry observers believe U.S. consumers lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year to scams. For businesses and financial institutions, identity theft alone cost $48 billion in 2002.
HPD’s Financial Fraud Unit has made 2,677 total fraud cases — including counterfeiting, forgery and bad checks — through Nov. 30. That includes 205 identity theft cases. Last year, there were 3,220 fraud cases but no separate figure was available on identity thefts.
In July, President Bush signed into law the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act. The measure imposes mandatory prison terms for criminals who use identity theft in committing terrorist acts and other offenses. A criminal serves an extra five years for using a false passport in connection with a terrorism-related crime. Two years are tacked on for ID theft in connection with other types of crimes.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Dec/03/ln/ln05p.html
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HONOLULU — Wal-Mart said it is pulling the “Superbad” DVDs with fake Hawaii driver’s licenses from its shelves in Hawaii.
KITV first broke the story about a fake Hawaii driver’s license that was being sold to promote the DVD release of the film.
The movie hit store shelves on Tuesday. Part of the movie is about how a teen uses a fake Hawaii driver’s license to buy beer.
When the mayor’s office saw the fake ID that was being sold with the DVD and CD it asked Wal-Mart to stop selling it.
“The possibility of promoting underage drinking, to use it in a fraudulent way puts us in a position to have to go after them,” Mayor Mufi Hannemann said.
Wal-Mart told KITV it agreed to pull the promotional package from Hawaii stores.
“We talked to the mayor’s office, and we certainly understand the concerns and so we have pulled the product from the shelves with the exclusive pack that contains that item,” a Wal-Mart representative said.
Sony responded with a written statement: “While the prop has a shifting dual photograph and other features to make clear it’s not a real ID, we regret that it has caused concerns in Hawaii or elsewhere.”
Sony said the package was a one time promotion and it has no plans to send out any more shipments.
“The fraud for illegal use was very high, and I’m very pleased that Wal-Mart has taken the step to remove them from their seven stores in Hawaii, but in our opinion it’s not enough,” Hannemann said.
The mayor wants it pulled across the country.
“I’m hoping that within 24 hours they will pull it nationally,” he said.
There is some concern that the gimmicks can easily be doctored and used in parts of the country where people are not familiar with the security devices on the real driver’s licenses like holograms.
http://www.kitv.com/entertainment/14776849/detail.html
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I could go on and on. There is a culture of ID forgery and bribery in Hawaii.Its driven by having a very ethnically diverse population, along with traditional unsupervised entry by boat and ship. Getting a well forged COLB in Hawaii is just a matter of having enough money to get it, even today. It would have been very, very easy before the WOT, pre 911.
The factories churned out hundreds of fake Hawai’i driver’s licenses, state identification cards, personal checks and, in at least one instance, a Costco card. Police also found evidence that crooks were trying to duplicate U.S. and foreign passports.
No mention of false birth certificates. Was this occurring in 1961? When did Obama get a US passport? His mother? How did they substantiate his citizenship?
There is a culture of ID forgery and bribery in Hawaii.Its driven by having a very ethnically diverse population, along with traditional unsupervised entry by boat and ship. Getting a well forged COLB in Hawaii is just a matter of having enough money to get it, even today. It would have been very, very easy before the WOT, pre 911.
More assertions but no proof. Again, we know that Barack Obama has a US passport, which is proof of citizenship. We know that there was a contemperaneous announcement of birth in a local newspaper. We know that he travelled to Indonesia with his mother when he was six years old. You are making a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions about document fraud to support your theory, which is created from whole cloth.
I have no problem in pressing Obama to provide to the public his birth certificate and raising questions about his travel to Pakistan when he was a student at Columbia. However, you are making a giant leap of logic and fact to assume that Obama was born outside the US or that he held an Indonesian passport. We need facts, not speculation.