In 1995, in Washington, D.C., a 16- and 22-year-old were charged with 40 counts of manufacturing fake identifications. At the raid, authorities seized $40,000 worth of computers and graphics equipment, blank driver’s licenses, and several hundred order forms for licenses from the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey. According to officials, the two gentlemen said they made $15,000 a week selling the fake licenses.
Criminal Violations Involving False
Identification (Federal and State)
There are numerous laws, both state and federal, that proscribe the fraudulent manufacture, transfer, and possession of false identification documents. The most prominent of these statutes is found in Title 18 USC Section 1028 and is entitled Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Identification Documents. This statute has a very wide reach, providing coverage under specified circumstances to government identification documents of federal, state, and local governments, as well as foreign governments and international quasi-governmental organizations. Note that the coverage of 18 USC deals only with governmental identification documents.
Another important federal criminal statute is found in Title 18 USC Section 1738
and is entitled Mailing Private Identification Documents without a Disclaimer. This section deals with private identification documents that are sent through the mails.
These two sections will be discussed in detail later.
There are many other federal statutes that deal directly and indirectly with false identification documents. Most of these statutes involve the fraudulent use, possession, counterfeiting, and forgery of specific federal documents:
• 18 USC 1306 (fraudulent application for alien registration card)
• 18 USC 499 (counterfeiting, forging, or altering military pass or permit or using or possessing such with intent to defraud)
• 18 USC 506 (forging, altering the seal of a U.S. agency, or possessing such with fraudulent intent)
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• 18 USC 701 (unauthorized manufacturing, selling, or possessing identification cards used by U.S. agencies or imitations thereof)
• 18 USC 922 (furnishing false identification to acquire a firearm or ammuni-tion)
• 18 USC 1423 (use of unlawfully obtained evidence of citizenship or naturalization)
• 18 USC 1426 (counterfeiting or selling naturalization or citizenship papers or equipment to produce certificates)
• 18 USC 1543 (forging, counterfeiting, or altering a passport or using such a passport)
• 49 USC 1472 (forging, counterfeiting, or altering aircraft certificates) Notes
1. See False Identification Crime Control Act of 1982, Report No. 97-802, House of Representatives, 97th Congress, 2nd Session. This report provides background on the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee on False Identification (FACFI), findings of the FACFI Committee concerning the widespread use of false identification documents in varied criminal activity, and section-by-section analysis of then-proposed federal legislation later enacted in 18 USC 1028.
2. See Testimony of the Honorable Albert R. Wynn (D-MD) Before the House Judicial Committee Subcommittee on Crime on H.R. 1552, The False Identification Act of 1995; also, Inspector General Report in 1991 entitled Youth and Alcohol: Laws and Enforcement.
3. Counterfeit IDs get a high-tech face lift: computer copies stump police, bartenders, Washington Post, Nov. 12, 1996, Metro Section p. 8; Forgers with fake IDs leave victims reeling, Cincinnati Enquirer, Feb. 2, 1996, Metro Section, p. C1.
4. See Criminal Intelligence Service Canada’s Annual Report on Organized Crime, 1996. (The report is retrievable free over the Internet at www.cisc.gc.ca/compute1.html.) 5. See Title 18, U.S. Code Section 1028(3), which states: “This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a subdivision of a State, or of an intelligence agency of the United States, or any activity authorized under Title V of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970…”
6. Associated Press Worldstream, Mafia boss arrested, International News, Aug. 20, 1996.
7. Accused LSD lab mastermind was drug figure in ’60s, The Vancouver Sun, Dec. 14, 1996, p. A14.
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The History
of Currency
3
Payment devices have come a long way in the history of the world. Money, notes, coins, and other such methods of payment have certainly seen their share of change over the years. From early time, man has used some sort of method of payment to transact business. One would think that bartering, trading, and like methods of transacting such business would be very cumbersome and difficult. In earlier civilizations, some of those transactions involved real property ranging from animals to precious goods, requiring keeping on hand or even carrying large and heavy amounts of precious metals or stones. We would have thought that paper money and coins were an innovation that would last forever. Who would have ever predicted that this advancement might one day be eliminated?
Today, as we approach the new millennium, money moves across the globe in a matter of seconds by the touch of a keyboard on a computer. The electronic commerce age has allowed us to recognize and be kept abreast of world economies and the value of various currencies as we transact business in the government, corporate, and private sectors internationally. To give you, the reader, a better understanding of the evolution of currency, we will now provide a history of the United States currency, simply because it is the most recognized payment note in the world.
A Brief Timeline of U.S. Currency
1690: Colonial Notes
In the early days of this nation, before and just after the American Revolution, Americans used English, Spanish, and French currencies. The Massachusetts Bay
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Colony issued the first paper money in the colonies that would later form the United States.
1775: Continental Currency