It’s another Saturday night.
After enduring another stressful week of classes at Nicholls, it’s a time Joe looks forward to. The sophomore from Slidell is ready to get out of his apartment, socialize with his fraternity friends, party and maybe meet a new gal tonight.
After dressing neatly, brushing his hair and splashing himself with cologne, Joe jumps into his Dodge Neon and drives off to a nightclub in the Houma-Thibodaux area.
“I’m just going to get loose and drink the night away,” he says. “Just for once, I can forget about the stresses of life and school. Tonight is my night.”
Every Saturday night Joe can be found at one of many local nightclubs downing a half dozen beers and getting drunk.
There’s just one problem. While Joe is legally allowed into the club, he is not 21, the legal age to purchase or drink alcohol. Instead, he acts as his 22-year-old brother with a fraudulent driver’s license, also known as a fake identification card.
Standard ID cards include the individual’s name, home address, height, weight, sometimes a Social Security number, an image of the person and most critically — age.
The use of fake ID’s started to rise in Louisiana in 1995 when the legal drinking age was raised to 21, according to local law enforcement. While the use of fake ID’s is not limited to illegally purchasing alcohol, that has become their primary purpose.
Fake ID use is a misdemeanor under state law, and users can be fined up to $250 and have their driver’s licenses suspended anywhere from 90 days to a year. Depending on the offender’s criminal record, some users may serve jail time also.
“We set the laws for a reason,” Thibodaux Police Detective Laura Guise said. “We aren’t trying to take away anyone’s fun, it’s just that young people are not responsible to drink before 21.”
Joe says he sometimes gets nervous when bouncers and bartenders check his fake ID at the clubs, but he has never gotten caught. And he’s confident that he never will. “(My brother and I) could be twins except he has slightly darker hair,” he says. “They don’t look hard enough or they would recognize it, but I get through all the time.”
Joe is one of a number of students with the same mindset. In a random survey of 50 Nicholls students under the 21-year-old legal drinking age, 17 admitted to possessing a fake ID, and 13 admitted to using it at least once to illegally purchase and drink alcohol. National studies report that more than 38 percent of teenagers between the ages 16 and 20 have used fake IDs at least once.
In the Nicholls survey, 27 others admitted to drinking illegally, but relied on friends older than 21 to purchase it for them.
“Fake IDs are definitely a problem,” Eugene Dial, vice president for student affairs, says. “We would caution students to act responsibly because they might get away with it in the short term, but the long term consequences could be a bigger problem than they expect.”
Dial says the University only consults a student if he or she is referred to them by law enforcement, which seldom occurs. Nicholls is not usually informed if a student is caught with a fake ID off-campus.
Godfather’s Pizza is the only place on-campus that sells alcohol, but record and age checks are conducted through the Colonel Card system, Dial said. Colonel Cards cannot be used as a fake ID because the birth date is not placed on the card.
Local businesses, night clubs and law enforcement agencies are trying to stop the epidemic of fake ID’s, but detecting them has become difficult. Computer savvy students use their laptops to create their own fake ID’s or order them from Internet sites devoted to producing near perfect duplicates of a driver’s license.
“We used to catch them often,” Thibodaux Police Lt. Michael Martin says. “Now they are so darn hard to catch because they can make those things almost like the real thing.”
Most states, including Louisiana, now use hologram images, magnetic strips and text that can only be seen in black light which is intended to make recreating fake ID’s nearly impossible.
Students, however, have counteracted by using advanced printers, laminating machines, and now even have access to resources to re-create holographic images.
“They are some tough cookies,” Martin says. “You have to learn all the little tricks because it’s become so challenging and complicated.”
Martin says many of the local clubs have done an excellent job detecting fake ID’s. Bill, a local club bouncer, says he is able to detect fake ID’s easily after passing an extensive training program. The fact that he admittedly used fake ID’s while he was a college student some 10 years ago doesn’t hurt either. Bill sometimes catches up to five fake ID’s a week.
Since the state laws against fake ID’s are strict, Bill says he would rather confiscate the fake ID’s, warn the users and let them go instead of contacting the police. If the same offender attempts to pass by him again, then he will report to the police.
“We are not out to ruin a young person’s life,” Bill said. “We understand people make mistakes, and everyone should have a one-strike warning.”
Bill waits by the door of the club greeting patrons as they approach. While he quickly stamps the hands of regulars, he carefully observes each newcomer and their driver’s license. He uses a black light, a magnetic strip reader and a string of confiscated fake ID’s from many states so he can match a suspicious one.
Bill takes his job seriously because if a bouncer or bartender is caught allowing a person with a fake ID to enter a club or purchase alcohol, the club can be fined as much as $500 and the business license can be taken away for months.
“I know the tricks of the trade well,” Bill says. “I would take offense if I knew someone would get beyond the checking point with me there.”
What Bill doesn’t know is that Joe has gotten past him more than 20 times during the past year. Joe ordered his fake ID from a Web site based in Canada for $155. The company claimed to sell legal “novelty” ID’s that were intended for use in skits, plays or movies. “I guess they made it that good because (Bill) is tough. I can tell,” Joe says.
Dial says the “novelty” claim will not fool him. Dial would not be surprised if the government started investigating the underground web sites. “We know what they are doing; they are trying to cover themselves and make it look as legal as possible.”
Joe says the webmaster has materials necessary to create near perfect ID’s for more than 30 states. Joe chose a duplicate of a Mississippi drivers license, because logically someone from Mississippi would attend Nicholls and live in Thibodaux.
“All he needed was a mug shot of my older brother, the birthday I wanted and my money. In a couple weeks I had it, and it looked beautiful,” he said.
Joe doesn’t feel like what he is doing is wrong and believes he is responsible enough to drink. But he agreed to reconsider using his fake ID again when informed of the state laws. “To me, it’s just fun and like a game,” he said. “I didn’t realize how serious the laws were though.”
Guise says using fake ID’s is definitely not a game, and the issue goes beyond just drinking and having a good time. They sometimes have tragic results. “What if you are in a bad accident and have health problems? If you have a fake ID, and we rush you to the hospital, they will treat you based on the person you are claiming to be. There would be no way we could tell.”
Guise says there have been some instances leading to the death of an individual because health care professionals were unable to know the proper health risks of that person.
That’s not all.
Guise was once involved in the case of a young adult who had a fake ID and was killed in a two-car crash. When the police found the person’s drivers license, they assumed that was the person’s true identity. A police officer informed the parents of their son’s apparent death.
Hours later, the police were made aware that they were not the real parents of the victim. “If anyone with a fake ID had to go through something like that,” Guise says, “their views on the issue would change forever.