In the black market world of fake ID's, business is booming and the Central Coast ranks at the top of that illegal market. The Center for Investigative action traveled to Sacramento to find out why more hasn't been done to stop it.
This issue all boils down to supply and demand, economics 101. To some people on the Central Coast these little pieces of plastic are like gold and in the underground world of fake identification, it costs a lot of green to get one but almost nothing to make one.
"It's just buying some paper and buying some laminate. Where it may cost them 5 dollars, if that, to produce the card. It's very lucrative. One counterfeit case I had, he had been counterfeiting cards for approximately 6 months and made over 80 thousand dollars," said Mary Bienko, the commander of California's DMV investigation unit.
Bienko said the cheap product and high demand is exactly why the Central Coast is one of the top four areas in the state for counterfeit driver's license sales, "Having the right amount of money, then you can purchase a counterfeit license. You can go into a grocery store or a little mom and pop shop or a check cashing place or places that take passport photos."
Undocumented workers desperate to keep a job in th AG fields are willing to buy what they can to get a job; and that brings us to the next level on the supply and demand ladder.
"We've been very honest about our workforce and that almost, probably 50 to 70 percent of those are not properly documented," said Rayne Pegg with the California Farm Bureau.
Pegg said a survey the bureau did just a few months ago showed two thirds of the state's growers don't have enough workers to harvest the amount of crop the Central Coast is producing.
"We are concerned if something like e-verify were to pass without an immigration reform to it, the impact that it would have on the community and how we would lose a number of our workers," said Pegg. E-verify is an internet based system used by Homeland Security to confirm employment eligibility and if the government were to force all California farmers to implement the system, Pegg said it would take a huge toll to the economy.
"You've seen what happens in other states where they implemented e-verify, in Georgia, Alabama, they're having a labor shortage. They've tried things like putting prison workers to work, they've tried to get those unemployed out in the fields and it hasn't been effective."
So far, California legislators aren't pushing for a crackdown. Central Coast assemblyman Luis Alejo said the government might be turning a blind eye when it comes to requiring all California farmers to use e-verify. "There's been less support for punitive solutions that are actually going to cause more problems than what it's trying to solve," said Alejo.
So in 2010 the department of motor vehicles issued a new license that is tougher to replicate because of new security features built in. Bienko said the DMV continues to run undercover stings to bust manufacturers.
"Try to find that counterfeit mill and just keep tracking it backwards and backwards until we get the counterfeit mill," said Bienko.
But Alejo said all these efforts will only but a dent in the fake id industry and said there's only one real answer to shut down counterfeit mills --stop the demand. "To have a path to citizenship by first being able to get a green card or a lawful permanent residency card so they can work legally and therefore you would avoid people losing jobs and avoid employers being penalized for hiring undocumented workers," said Alejo.
