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| Huge Counterfeit Ring Busted in Denver by Feds |
| 2003-05-15 |
| Eight Denver residents are in custody in connection with what authorities call a very large, very extensive counterfeit ring. Federal investigators said that the counterfeit ring sold thousands of realistic-looking fake driver's licenses, green cards and Social Security cards. The Denver operations were part of a chain of counterfeit document cells operating from Los Angeles to New York City. Wow, sounds like a franchising operation. Investigators said most customers were likely illegal immigrants, but "these sorts of documents could be accessed by people with other sorts of designs, including terrorists," said U.S. Attorney John Suthers. Federal investigators, who have been working on the case for 2 1/2 years, call this the biggest case of this type in Denver's history with "some of the highest quality product that they have seen," said Suthers' spokesman Jeff Dorschner. Alejandro Bravo, of Atlanta and Los Angeles, was arrested Tuesday at a hotel in Charlotte, N.C., on fraud charges. The suspected ring leader faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. Federal officials seized fraudulent documents, computers and materials used to make fake documents from three west Denver homes and from Bravo's hotel room in Charlotte. Dorschner said authorities in Denver were investigating small-time document vendors when they realized the ring could extend into Mexico. "We started low and we've started to move our way up," he said. Authorities believe Bravo worked for brothers Alfonso and Pedro Castorena, indicted in Texas in 1995 on charges of operating a network that distributed fake documents in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas and New York. |
| Posted by:ColoradoConservative |
| #1 If I were his lawyer, I wouldn't accept cash. |
| Posted by: Becky 2003-05-16 01:07:55 |