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Fake IDs - then and now (1 Viewer)

Nigel

Footballguy
Inspired by Chet’s thread on send his daughter to Europe, and her considering getting a fake ID for said trip.

From what I understand it is very easy to get one these days via mysterious Chinese outlets. I have several college-aged nieces and nephews who have fake MA license that are spot-on. You’re not going to present them to TSA officials but to buy booze and get into bars they’re foolproof. Simply send a pic and some money to China and a month or so later an ID arrives in the mail. So easy. I fully expect my HS senior daughter to get one for herself sometime soon, it's what 18 year olds do and I'm fine with that.

Back in my day (late 80s) there were a few options. If you were lucky you had an older (ideally by 3 or 4 years) same-sex-as-you/look-alike sibling to simply give you their old driver’s license. If you had big balls and a willing accomplice you could take that sibling or someone who looked like you's birth certificate, SS card, etc., go to the DMV, impersonate him and get a new license with your pic and their name/birthdate, etc. If neither of those were options, like in my case, you had to get more creative. So when I was a freshman in college we designed a board made to scale that looked like a RI license. We hung it on a wall with a blue sheet behind it and you would stand in the cutout and get a pic snapped with a Polaroid instant camera. Then we would cut that picture out, glue a print-out of some official language that appeared on actual RI licenses onto the back of it, laminate it, then go get liquored-up at the bar.

Last month I was going through some old boxes of crap and found a Polaroid of me posing in front of the board. We would put our real names and signatures (which I've redacted) on it so we could use credit cards as back up. Changed a few digits here and there on the license number, birth date, etc so not everyone's was the same. Pretty crude-looking in hindsight and the finished product was embarrassingly bad by today's standards, but they worked like a charm in and around Boston back then. 

Tell me about your fake ID.

 
At some point, a friend of mine found a slightly-crumpled drivers license on a bar floor.  The guy was roughly the same height as me, brown hair, and wore glasses in his picture so he gave it to me.  The guy looked super creepy in the picture and was 8 years older than me, but it worked for buying beer a handful of times.

For the most part I would just use a chalked ID.  Had a friend who was remarkably adept at turning an 87 into an 81.  In retrospect it was pretty crude, but the kinds of places we were going were always going to let you in so long as you had something halfway accurate-looking.

 
The big thing back in the day for kids in Buffalo though, was to go to Toronto to get your fake.  There's a mythical place, kinda like Oz, where you can get any fake you want for any state.  Had some friends who did it and they were passable.  I have no idea if kids still do this though.

 
When I was in high school my parents had a kick ### laser printer, we created our very own “Ohio” DLs....we had never even seen a Ohio DL

First time out with said ID was at a local pub.  So of course the cops walk in, and straight up to me....I look 15, not 22.  Without hesitation I pull the DL and had it to the officer.  His response?   “Hmmmm, I’ve never seen an Ohio DL before”. I replied with “well there you go”.  

He let 17 year old Wrigley go

 
Back in the day around here they had ABC (Alcohol Beverage Commission) cards if you didn't have a drivers license. 

My cousin was a graphic artist and he made fakes for a few people.

I remember the one place we went to when my buddy turned 21.  He walks in with his license.  The bouncer looks at him and starts laughing....you've been coming here for like 2 years

 
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:lol:  

Went to college late 80s - early 90s and did the same thing with a Tennessee license.  Didn't even change the name.... so groups of people with Tenn licenses/name would go out together.  Doormen rarely tossed anyone even when they recognized the game.

 
Had a guy in my fraternity that looked somewhat like me and he handed me his DL after he got a new one.

I looked very young for 19, but thought I might give it a try.  Plus it was Ladies' night in Newport Beach and with so many beautiful women there it was totally worth the risk of going to jail.

After waiting nervously in line for over 30 minutes I finally get to the front of the line and hand over the fake ID.

Bouncer doesn't even get to putting a flashlight on the DL, he just smirks, hands me back the ID, and says "Nice try man, but I know Brian."   :eek:   :bag:

Millions of people living in SoCal at the time and this bouncer knows the guy on my DL...   :D

Never tried that again.

 
back in '89 when i was 19, a guy i worked with gave me his old license after he had gotten a new one. "Anthony Sinopoli" was the name, born in 1964,  6' 4' and 265, with a huge mullet in the pic. (i'm not Italian, nor 6' 4", nor 265 [then] and didn't rock a mullet). anyway, it worked well enough in Fresno to buy beer from the local liquor stores during the summer, before heading off to UC Davis for school. around October of that year, i found my self in Old Town Sacramento (bar-district) with some older friends who were all 21+. couple of really cute girls in this group decided we all needed to go to a bar, and since i was already drinking with them they assumed i was of age.

anyway, we roll up to this bar and there's a bouncer outside checking IDs. i had memorized everything on this fake license: DOB, address, DL#, eye color, and even the correct birth sign (in case they asked). confidently, i stroll up to the bouncer and present him with my awesome fake ID, ready for anything. he takes a few seconds to scan the ID, looks me up and down, and then says, "What year did you graduate high school?" being slightly buzzed already, and apparently incapable of doing basic math, i panicked and mumbled some BS about not graduating high school. bouncer then says, "Well, I'm just gonna hang on to this if you don't mind." i then decided becoming indignant was the best course of action, and demanded to have my license returned immediately. bouncer replies,"That's cool. I'm just gonna call the cops and you can ask them to have it back."

welp. that was it for me. rest of the group went into the bar and drank for a few hours. i sulked around outside, getting sober by the minute, waiting for them to give me a ride back to Davis. never got that ID back.

 
My brother was 2 1/2 years older than me.  He gave me one of his old licenses.  He was a fair bit heavier than I was.  I remember going to get a pony keg for a party.  The guy looked at my ID and said "Lost a lot of weight?"  I said yeah "Thyroid problem".  I'm sure he knew it was a bunch of ####, but back then they didn't really give a crap, just some vague semblance of legality was all that was required.

 
I just gave them my regular DL. and was never denied. 

People are to stupid to do the math, They only look at the picture.  I had a Hooters girl squint eyes, then told me. Wow just made it.  

 
:lol:  

Went to college late 80s - early 90s and did the same thing with a Tennessee license.  Didn't even change the name.... so groups of people with Tenn licenses/name would go out together.  Doormen rarely tossed anyone even when they recognized the game.
Summer after freshman year I used to go to a bar in a Chinese restaurant with a buddy after our shift at our summer job at a lumber yard. One night a cop came in and asked us for ID. I handed him mine, he looked at it, and handed it back to me. My buddy then gave him his, he looked at it, paused...then he asked for mine back and looked at them side by side. Names and everything else were different but I'm pretty sure he noticed that only the last digit of our license numbers had been swapped out. He said "be right back" and walked to the lobby out of view. A minute later a waitress who knew us as regulars came by and said "he just called a car to come get you boys." A couple of years earlier, when that same place was a steakhouse, me and this kid worked our first jobs as dishwashers/busboys, so we knew the layout of the joint. The cop must have thought he had us pinned in there, but we made a quick decision to gtfo out and bolted through the kitchen, out the back loading dock, and then ran a half mile through the woods to a street where we called his sister from a payphone to come pick us up. Made new IDs the next day. 

 
Never had one, didn't really see the need.  Didn't drink in HS  :bag:  and when I got to college, my drinking situations consisted of drinking Boone's in dorm rooms (again,  :bag: ) and going to keg parties.  And there were plenty of those.  Bars really didn't appeal to me or anyone in my circles.  By the time we all turned 21 we started going to bars.  

 
I just gave them my regular DL. and was never denied. 

People are to stupid to do the math, They only look at the picture.  I had a Hooters girl squint eyes, then told me. Wow just made it.  
Similar thing happened to a friend. 3 of us walked into a strip club. My friend was 17, but looked 14. As we walked by the bar some old guy sitting at table yelled at the bartender to check my friend's ID. My friend handed over his real DL. The bartender, looking a little unsteady himself, eventually just says "OK" and we go sit down. 

Later we're talking to one of the girls at our table and ask her who the ####### was that asked for the ID check. She laughed and said he's the owner of the club.

 
Nothing to do with fake IDs but kinda funny. Years later I had a friend who was a cop. He approached a parked car one night. When he got the young couple's attention and they sat up, the girl, totally naked, was sitting in the driver's seat. He asked for her DL. Shined his flashlight on the DL, also illuminating all of her. He said he probably remained in that position for at least a minute before realizing he was holding the DL upside down. 

 
No joke:  To go to bars, I didn't need one in Montreal in grade 8 at 13.  I needed one two years later when they started enforcing and I wanted to go to different stricter bars.  So, I went to the local library and ask for a library ID card and sat down at the typewriter and went to town.  Believe it or not, it worked.

I needed something different when I moved to Toronto for grade 13 at the age of 17.  I impersonated my friend's brother at the DMV and got a foolproof version.

 
Had a friend who was making fake Alaska drivers licenses.  Went to his house where he took our pictures in front of a yellow sheet, and a week later he delivered two copies.  They looked ok except the lamination was terrible, so I did my best to leave it in the little plastic window in the wallet when I showed it.  I think it was $120, a lot of money for a college kid in the early '90s.  I knew not to use it at the campus bars in Eugene, as the bouncers prided themselves on snagging fakes - one bar even had a huge photo-album like book full of confiscated ones.  But I did use it in Portland during summers, which was huge because I was younger than most of my friends.  Eventually one of them got snagged, I think I still have the other one in a box somewhere.

 
My buddy would use your real license, a little white out on the last digit of the year and print the new digit on a laminate sheet to put over the top of the license.  Worked like a charm, he had a little business going for a while.

 
So there was a package goods store near me that was notorious for taking fake ids.  It was always hit or miss on getting served there.  We would all take turns trying and taking our chances, usually with little success.

Luckily, We usually knew a guy that would get us beer anyway.

Well the day I turned 21.  I walk in get a case a beer. Walk to the counter.  NOT EVEN CARDED!@#!@#  :wall:

 
There was a place near CC in Philly that made "novelty" state IDs on Spring Garden Street. You gave your real name, used the stock address. They shot your picture, out the door for $50 cash. Mid-2000s.

87 State St.

Montpelier, VT 05620

 
:lol:  

Went to college late 80s - early 90s and did the same thing with a Tennessee license.  Didn't even change the name.... so groups of people with Tenn licenses/name would go out together.  Doormen rarely tossed anyone even when they recognized the game.
Enjoying this thread.  Brings back a lot of memories.   I had a similar experience freshman year of college.  I got my ID from a guy at UT who made some great fake Texas IDs.  They became quite popular.  Only problem was that they were all the same guy's info on the card, Robert Henry Ross from Richardson, Texas so in time they wouldn't work locally but worked like a charm outside of Austin.  That poor ******* probably had all sorts of charges on his record.  I remember getting busted urinating off of Bourbon St. in NOLA and giving that ID to a cop.  He pulled me aside as if he was going to arrest me "Robert Henry Ross, how would you like it if I came to Richardson, Texas and pissed on your lawn".  He eventually let me go but my friends were cracking up across the street with the talk I was given. 

 
Graduating HS @ 6'3" and 230 lbs, never really needed a fake.  Rarely got carded and if I did, just moved on. 

Sophomore daughter in college and the group went in and the fakes from China were $50/each.  Being from the WI,but going to school in KY, she went with the fake from MI.  Still can't pull off the southern accent they all have down there.  One of her friends dad was a police chief and he completely approved of the fakes without hesitation. 

 
Mine was Leif Michaelson

Still use this name at when they ask for your name at coffee shops and other order, wait, receive places.  
I sometimes use "Jasper".  Ever since the "E.T." ride at Universal Studios, where you input your name at the start of the line, and a life-size E.T. figure welcomed you by name further down the line.

 
My original license had 3/4ths of the last number of my birth year missing. I got creative and turned it into a 1. Making me 7 years older. I looked young as it was, but it worked. Then, I pulled over by a cop, in broad daylight, and he didn’t notice. :eek:   I was ####ting bricks while he was writing my ticket. 

So, I went to the dmv after that, to get a replacement. One that I could show to the cops, if I ever got pulled over again.  I just told the dmv I lost my ID. The woman that inputted my info, made a mistake and put the wrong year in.  Walked in 18, walked out 23. Legit CA license. Never changed it until I tried to get a license in AZ, 12 years later. 

 
My first fake ID was a total crap job.  I made it in 1986, senior year of high school.  All the drinking age laws were changing from 18 to 21 right around that time and I was missing the cuts  :hot: .  I changed the 8 in 1968 to a 3 by poking tiny holes in the plastic laminate of the license on the left side of the 8 and filling the holes with liquid paper.  It was an Ohio drivers license which I took with me to Texas for college.  While it didn't look very good to me, it seemed to work pretty well.  I assume most of those checking back then didn't really care.  I am not even sure some of those college bar bouncers even knew where to find the birth date.  It wasn't difficult for me to pass as someone a little older as I looked the part.  I would leave it in the plastic of the wallet as much as possible.  Occasionally, someone would require me to take it out and that always made me nervous.  Eventually I did get busted this way, but I think it was more because about 5 of us tried going into a bar together, and everybody had a fake.   Not all my friends looked the part.

My second fake ID was better.  My college roommate worked at Kinkos, and he was able to work some magic with their color copier and laminating machine to produce a replica of my Ohio license but with an altered birth date.   That one served its purpose until I reached 21.

 
I took my brother's social security card and birth certificate to the DMV when I was 18 and got his license with my picture on it. 15+ years later they started using some facial recognition software and I got a letter in the mail informing me my license was suspended for fraud. It's on my permanent record. It was worth it.

 
I took my brother's social security card and birth certificate to the DMV when I was 18 and got his license with my picture on it. 15+ years later they started using some facial recognition software and I got a letter in the mail informing me my license was suspended for fraud. It's on my permanent record. It was worth it.
This makes no sense.  What license would they suspend for fraud?  A 15 year old one? Do the ones in your state never expire?  How did you resolve it?

 
Lucked into someone’s actual license who looked more like me than my own license pic. It was some dude who joined the Navy and didn’t need his license anymore and gave it to one of his friends, who then bequeathed it to me when we realized the resemblance.

Didn’t use it much. The closer to 21 we got, the more we just drank at somebody’s house and didn’t go to bars.

some girls  a year or two younger than me got busted trying to take someone else’s info to the DMV in the next county and had some major community service as a result.

I felt bad for all the people who went to great lengths to doctor  their ID’s when they rotated the layout on all the under 21’s  90 degrees.

 
This makes no sense.  What license would they suspend for fraud?  A 15 year old one? Do the ones in your state never expire?  How did you resolve it?
They said I fraudulently got a driver's license so they suspended mine. I had to write a statement saying what I did and retake the written test and driving test. 

 
A local orthopedic surgeon's son was making a boatload of money making fake ID's in college.  The only problem was he was using his dad's information on them, address, SS# (back when SS# was used, and address).  :lol:   One day during a surgery we get a call a detective wanted to talk to him between cases.  Apparently had at least 20 of them confiscated at local bars and strip clubs. 

 
I was a graphic design major though high school and college.  Made fake IDs, inspection stickers, I prob even made a fake Blockbuster card once 

 
My buddy Kev (from the Story Time thread) had an ID that a friend of ours gave him. It was this dude's actual ID, they looked so similar that it got Kev into every bar without a second look.

One night, we got pulled over and the cop found it in his wallet. He asked Kev why he was carrying someone else's ID. I immediately thought to myself, "Oh, that's my friend Mike's. He left it at my house accidentally so I stuck it in there since I knew I'd have my wallet with me when I see him next. That way, I can return it to him." Kev instead went with : "I use it to buy beer." It was instantly confiscated. 

As I stared at him in disbelief, I imagine the look on my face was not dissimilar to that of a guy in the 1950s whose son just came out of the closet at Thanksgiving dinner. 

 
I was born in 73 so a guy I worked with got me a sticker that made the 3 look like a 0. Worked like a charm, especially at the Bow & Arrow in Harvard square. That's not saying much though they let anyone in there back in the day. GB $2 16oz Schaefer special. 

 
A local orthopedic surgeon's son was making a boatload of money making fake ID's in college.  The only problem was he was using his dad's information on them, address, SS# (back when SS# was used, and address).  :lol:   One day during a surgery we get a call a detective wanted to talk to him between cases.  Apparently had at least 20 of them confiscated at local bars and strip clubs. 
Amazes me how some people are so smart and yet so dumb all wrapped into one.

 
When I was 17 and my brother moved away to Houston he gave me his old Iowa ID.  He also gave me his old college ID, an old debit card and work ID.  Even though he was 6 years older than me and obviously had a chubbier face it worked every time.  There were two times when I was questioned about it and I always had something to back it up.  What made it even better was that the address on it was my current address and our social security numbers (ID number) were only one digit different.

 
Wisconsin was quite laizze faire back in my day.  Plenty of places to drink and it was rare to get carded.  One time, when I was 16 I went to lunch with a 25 year old coworker.  We ordered burgers and beers and the bartender carded Mary, really a rather extraordinary circumstance in that day and place.  She got sort of insulted and then asked since he carded her why not me.  He says," yeah, like a gorgeous woman like you would really be here with some kid as your date."  I only wished but I kept on drinking.

 
There was an Armenian kid a year ahead of me in HS with a really thick head of black hair and a freakishly old-looking face for his age. He would take baby powder and rub it in his hair to give it a touch of gray, then go into liquor stores and buy without getting carded every time. When powdered-up the dude looked like he was 50. 

 
Fake ID #1 - in high school a buddy of mine had one of those "Personal Identification" cards from New York and it never seemed to work for him so he gave it to me. Guy in the picture looked very little like me other than the same color of hair. I never used it for a bar because I knew a bouncer would never buy it but I was never turned down using it to buy beer in a grocery store. Cashiers never seemed to want the hassle of turning someone down if they could avoid it.

Fake ID #2 - in college I knew the high school fake id would never work for the bars/clubs, but fortunately one of the very first friends I made on campus had a fake birth certificate. It looked pretty cheesy but just official enough with a metallic gold seal on it. Took it to some West Virginia state office and had an official state id made with it. They never even blinked when I handed the birth certificate to them. That state id was gold, worked everywhere across the country because it was listed as official in some id book. If I was asked for backup id I'd just say I never carry anything other than cash and id because you never know when you might pass out and the bouncer would be like 'good point'.

 
I had State ID made from a place in Chicago (California and Archer).  When asked why I didn't have a drivers license I said I have epillepsy and not supposed to drive.  This usually shut down the line of questions.  Unfortunately I was late bloomer and was probably still 5' 4' freshman year of college with a sprinkling of zits so I didn't use fake ID much.  Fortunately, still had a blast at college without having to rely on bars. 

 
Fake ID #1 - in high school a buddy of mine had one of those "Personal Identification" cards from New York and it never seemed to work for him so he gave it to me. Guy in the picture looked very little like me other than the same color of hair. I never used it for a bar because I knew a bouncer would never buy it but I was never turned down using it to buy beer in a grocery store. Cashiers never seemed to want the hassle of turning someone down if they could avoid it.
I had one of those in HS, purchased in Times Square when my buddy and I ditched a class trip to the Museum of Natural History and went rogue in Manhattan.  Never worked once outside of Oswego, NY.  I think you could have given any bartender in Oswego a note from "your mother" saying you were 21 and they'd serve you.

 

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