Fake IDs may be trickier to spot

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - Police and liquor stores agree, in this college town, there is never a shortage of fake IDs, but one store manager said it's getting trickier to tell what's fake and what's real.

Campus Bar Barry Liquors manager Ben Reiling said fake IDs continue to be a big concern for his business.

"On a weekend, we see two or three a night probably," he said. "Sometimes we have a questionable ID. I don't know if it's fake or not, but we turn away the sale."

In fact, it's happened so often, that he's put together quite the collection over the years -- a binder of about 400 fake IDs that he's confiscated in his nine years at Bar Barry.

But he said in recent months, the quality of the fake IDs is better, and, in some cases, it takes a little more scrutiny to tell them apart from legitimate IDs. Though he has his methods.

"It used to be we looked for UV ink on them, you could only see under black light, but that's being duplicated now," Reiling said. "And we used to look more for holograms, but that can also be duplicated. The hardest thing for them to reproduce now is the micro printing."

West Lafayette Police officer Adam Ferguson said his department is always looking out for students using fake IDs, along with other alcohol-related offenses.

He said West Lafayette bars and liquor stores do a good job weeding out the fakes from the legitimate driver's licenses. When they don't, students can face a variety of punishments for getting caught. Simply possessing the fake is only an infraction. A minor in possession of alcohol or a minor in a tavern is a misdemeanor charge. And the charges can escalate from there.

"If you're presenting an idea as a government ID and knowing it to be false, that's a felony," Ferguson said. "And if you're presenting it to, say, law enforcement as your fake ID, that's false informing."

The Campus Community Bar Coalition held a meeting last week, to discuss preparations for Grand Prix week at Purdue. At that meeting, Indiana State Excise Police officers said the fake ID problem is not going away, and may even be getting worse.