The fever of fake driving licenses: 200 detected in one year

It is one of the quietest types of crime, but also the most difficult to control. Document falsification is the order of the day and the purpose of those who commit it is very varied: from identity theft to perpetrate scams to driving without a valid official permit. The latter accounts for more than half of the reports made in the last year by the Forensic Documentoscopy Service (Sedofor) of the Municipal Police. The fever of fake licenses is the order of the day: of the total number of documentary reports made by these agents, 335 in 2023, almost 200 (197) were for this matter. ABC spent a morning with these officials, who are at the Corps’ renovated headquarters on Plomo Street (Arganzuela), where they have state-of-the-art technology for their work; as is the case of a new version of the Docubox a few months ago, which for the layman is a great ‘microscope’ capable of detecting counterfeits using a series of parameters, from ultraviolet light to infrared and other advances. But visual expertise , tactile and auditory of each agent continues to be the main raw material of these officials. In the Sedofor laboratory, dependent on the Judicial Police Station, agent Alberto gives us a card from a foreign country. “Touch it, don’t look at it,” he says, and then hands us one that looks identical: “Do the same. Do you notice the difference? The touch is slightly different, since in one you can appreciate the relief of the letters more than in the other. But Alberto does the definitive test. He throws one of the cards on the table and then the other: “Do you notice that they make a different sound?” Indeed.Related News standard No A man is arrested for usurping the identity of others for years in Valencia Toni Jiménez The arrested man was convicted in a trial under the profile of one of his victims and tried to confuse the Civil Guard with false documents after be discoveredHis expertise, that of the 15 investigators that make up Sedofor, is enough to realize the fraud; but, for a court, empirical data is needed. And for this there is the Docubox, where these scientific police dissect, as if it were an autopsy, the authenticity of each one. There you see the millimeter traces, the difference in colors, the invisible stamps, the tiny drawn patterns… More than a dozen details that are invaluable to the average citizen. The crane driver without a permitThis is how during 2023 165 reports were made for driving licenses false and another 32 for international licenses. In addition, 39 different identity documents were drawn up; 27 calligraphic skills; 57 corresponding to vehicle documentation, and 15 more of other types. This crystallized in 314 technical reports; 53 experts; 43 on verification of possession of foreign driving licenses; 18 bodies of judicial writing, and 1,932 telephone consultations for document verification. In total, 2,359 interventions in just one year. The trend is upward. Identification models for comparison with real ones IGNACIO GIL In the middle of the analysis, two members of the Judicial Traffic Police Station enter the room. «We bring an international driving license from a foreign citizen who resides in Madrid. They have stopped him at a checkpoint in Carabanchel and we suspect that it is fake, also the one from his country of origin. “We bring it by judicial order to know its authenticity and, if the illegality is confirmed, it will go to a quick trial.” That is day-to-day life at Sedofor, within a process in which the chain of custody must be scrupulously maintained. And the most striking cases are known. For example, less than a month ago, a collision occurred on the M-30 and, when the insurance tow truck driver arrived, the Judicial Traffic Police officers also asked for his driving license: “It was fake. In these cases, the license should always be requested, because it is necessary to know who is removing that vehicle. Now, in the autumn-winter campaign, with the controls of the December long weekend and Christmas, cases of documentary falsification like these will predictably be reproduced. Most of these matters are “from Latin Americans who come to live in Spain and have never “I have had the license,” explains David, one of the Sedofor police officers. «For them, the process of obtaining the permit is long and they opt for the quickest route, which is to get a fake ID. Above all, Venezuelans and Colombians. The exchange agreement [que hay entre otros países y España] was suspended years ago due to irregularities in places of origin [donde se adquirían de manera ilegal] and there are others that are sent by email, for example, from Venezuela,” he adds, without any type of control. In Spain, you have to go through a driving school and an exam, which is not mandatory there. Complete library with specimens or models of official documents from different countries provided by embassies Ignacio GilBut you can also find many French, Georgian, Ukrainian, Italian permits . «There are people who want to hide that they do not have a driving license, and there are others who have a record and directly simulate another identity. And other countries demand that, to renew them, they must return there, like Colombia,” they add. For all this work, it is essential to have fluid relations with the embassies, something that occurs with the exceptions of nations that do not usually show cooperation in these matters or in many others.madrid_dia_0703The second chapter in number of Sedofor interventions is made up of the documents of identity. Not only DNI, but also NIE, various identification cards and passports. For example, they work with counterfeit entry stamps in Schengen countries. If a passport has thirty pages, almost all of them can be authentic, but criminals falsify the main one, the biographical data. «What happens is that there are countries that have good security measures, like Germany, but there are cases in which they are quite mediocre. And with false documentation of this type, other original ones can now be generated, which is very sensitive, even more than what can happen with driving licenses, because there are criminals who commit fraud. [por ejemplo, bancarios o ciberestafas] and others who thus evade the action of Justice,” says agent David. This is what happened recently with one of the hitmen who murdered the Colombian drug lord Leónidas Vargas at the 12 de Octubre hospital in Madrid on January 8, 2009, when he was recovering in a room. He had worked with Pablo Escobar. Well, Jonathan Montoya Rendón had been sentenced to 24 years in prison. He was the one who, for 300 euros, told the gang’s gunman that Vargas was admitted to room 543. He escaped from prison on leave last year and, after becoming one of the ten most wanted fugitives in Spain, he turned himself in this month. of July. He carried false documentation that was analyzed by Sedofor. Disabled cards Other tasks include the analysis of false license plates, altered frames, ITV and illegal car insurance… Once the vehicles brought from abroad to our country arrive ‘ made up’, “they are very difficult to control”, especially if they are even registered. And what about parking cards for people with reduced mobility. «It is a quite particular practice: there are many photocopies, use of authorizations from deceased persons, modifications of the expiration date by filing the real one with a punch and putting the fake one with black ink… The problem is that these people do not have it assumed as “A crime, but they are falsifying an official document,” explains one of the municipal police officers. They even have certificates of presentation for Cervantes Institute exams to obtain nationality. Or partners of a company who have issued checks signed by colleagues, with very variable amounts. They still remember in Sedofor the case of a guy who had up to 2,000 counterfeits in a checkbook. «Country of origin: Narnia. Place of residence: Mordor» They call them fantasy permits: they are those false documents so crude that the judges themselves consider that they are not criminal because they are so incapable of deceiving anyone. Thus, it is normal to find cards downloaded from the Internet or even people with passports issued in Narnia or who reside in Mordor, to give some surreal examples. It also happens a lot with disabled parking cards, a very popular scam. To compare good fakes, they have specimens: folders classified by country with documents of all kinds provided by embassies, as up-to-date as possible, in order to compare them. The role of the patrols who patrol the streets is fundamental, because they are usually the first filter through which all this illegal documentation passes. For this reason, through Cifse, the security and emergency training center, experts like David and Alberto give courses to their colleagues so that they have better knowledge, in addition to those they take, for example, as experts in Documentoscopy.

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