Fake IDs

[YankeeFan]

Article in the Times about fake IDs, and the length kids go to get them:

nyti.ms/1jZnW3u

Did you have a fake ID when you were younger? How'd you get it, and did it work?

Before I left for college, I got my picture on my older brother's drivers license, so it was bullet proof -- even used it for a traffic ticket. (He got off when he went to court, and the cop could not identify him as the driver of the car.)

Before that, as a freshman in high school, a bunch of us got fake college IDs in Times Square (I think the drinking age was 19 then), which worked in places that didn't really give a ****, which was a pretty good number of places.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Got one from a college friend of my sister's who, yeah, looked not very much like me but enough to give a bouncer reason to wave me through. There were definitely places I didn't bother trying to go with it.

My sister did it the foolproof and totally illegal way -- she went to the DMV and got a license with an older friend's info on it. Then I think the friend had to go and say she lost her license and get another one. I'm thinking these days the same license being lost twice in a short time wouldn't be so easy to pull off.

 

[Pilot]

Got one from a college friend of my sister's who, yeah, looked not very much like me but enough to give a bouncer reason to wave me through. There were definitely places I didn't bother trying to go with it.

My sister did it the foolproof and totally illegal way -- she went to the DMV and got a license with an older friend's info on it. Then I think the friend had to go and say she lost her license and get another one. I'm thinking these days the same license being lost twice in a short time wouldn't be so easy to pull off.

Yeah, that's the way I did it, too. Took my friends info and got a license. I was sitting and waiting for it to be printed, head deep in a magazine, and they kept shouting, "PETER? PETER? Your license is ready!" and I totally blanked it out until it finally clicked. "Oh, uh, yes, I, Peter, am ready to pick up my license."

Any time I was with the real Pete, of course, I had to be super careful. One of the first things we did was go to a new movie theater in town that served beer. We went to see a Bond movie. We got there really early, and he went in first. Then, like 20 minutes later I went in. A manager was checking IDs at the door, and he looked and looked and looked at mine. Then he goes, "Hmmm... this is strange. The only two people in this theater were born on the same day."

I nearly had a heart attack! I spent the whole movie convinced a cop was going to tap me on the shoulder.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

I never had one. I just took advantage of being short and having tall friends. While the guy at the door was checking my taller friend's ID, I'd walk in behind him.
I don't ever remember it not working.

 

[BTExpress]

Was at a Kinko's some time ago and a couple of kids were obviously trying to photoshop/manufacture a fake ID. Eventually a worker came over and shooed them off with a "You can't do that here."

 

[Baron Scicluna]

My freshman year college roommate used some chalk to scratch out part of one of his year numbers to make his age older. A couple of weeks later, he had a really unhappy look when he came back to our room. A cop had come into the bar he was in, checked IDs, and discovered his was fake. He ended up paying a couple hundred dollar fine.

That scared me into never trying.

 

[Vombatus]

I once tried to buy beer with a fishing license. Didn't work, mainly because it didn't have a photo.

 

[RickStain]

Before I left for college, I got my picture on my older brother's drivers license, so it was bullet proof -- even used it for a traffic ticket. (He got off when he went to court, and the cop could not identify him as the driver of the car.)

That's pretty hard to believe.

 

[Starman]

When I got my driver's license in 1974, the drinking age was 18.

The license was directly printed on a hard plastic background.

It was easy to take a hobby knife and scratch out part of the '58' to make it a '56.' Buff it up a bit with steel wool and touch it up with nail polish, and I was good to go.

Probably wouldn't have fooled a cop with a magnifying glass, but it fooled all the bar bouncers and beer-store clerks for two years.

 

[User 11148]

I hobby-knifed mine (when you could buy beer at 18), but failed to follow up with step two, which involved going to the DMV and getting a legit replacement. Naturally a few weeks later I got caught up in one of those routine (for then) broad-brush traffic stops. The officer looked closely at mine, scratched his fingernails across the obvious alterations, looked up at me for a long, long, pause, then ... looked away and handed it back with 'nary a word. I went STRAIGHT to the DMV and got a replacement.

 

[forever_town]

I never had a fake ID. Never had any desire to drink until well after I turned 21.

 

[cranberry]

The drinking age was 18 in my day and NY didn't have photos on drivers licenses. Not that very many places even required ID.

 

[Big Circus]

I actually shared an ID with a friend. It was a real one we'd gotten hold of. My name was Lance Price.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

Took a road trip with a couple of buddies to Chicago when we were 17 and hit one of the many ID shops on California Avenue. Paid $15 or something, filled out a form and got an official-looking Illinois ID card.

I'm sure it helped that I lived in another state and then went to college in another state, but there was only 1 time in the next four-plus years that it didn't work. At most I got the "Is this a driver's license?" question. I explained I lost my license and this is the ID card I was issued, and all was good.

 

[spikechiquet]

I started working at a bar when I was under 21 as a DJ/barback. Since it was a cash-under-the-table type of job, I never filled out paperwork and they just assumed I was of-age so I would always have a few after work and go in on my nights off as well.
By the time I turned 21, I knew the owner well enough to spring it on her and him that NOW I was legal...they thought it was funny and never got mad.
The only other time I drank in a bar underage that wasn't my "home base" and got away with it was on June 7, 1997...Game 4 of Stanley Cup final. Was in a hick-town 30 miles outside of where I grew up. Packed to the walls with Red Wings fans...no one gave a **** who was drinking, as long as they had cash.

 

[The Big Ragu]

They changed the age to 21 right before I would have been legal at 18 or 19 or whatever it was, which put fake IDs at a premium -- more so when I was still high school aged, than when I was in college.

But when I was in college, I had a friend who created a business from scratch, making fake IDs that were really good. He'd photograph you and create the license for you in a few days. It was actually a pretty sophisticated operation and his licenses looked pretty authentic. It was so good, and so lucrative, that he sold the business to someone else when he was graduating.

One day during our senior year, we decided to screw with him, and we got someone else we knew to call him and say that they were calling from the FBI and they wanted to interview him regarding a couple of arrests of minors using forged identifications. They had implicated him, and it was a Federal offense, etc. We let him sit around for a few hours worrying and trying to decide whether he should contact an attorney, before we let him off the hook.

 

[Webster]

I had my brother's license during my entire time in college. We don't look that much alike, but the bars weren't that interested in turning you away.

 

[Mr. Sunshine]

Worked the door at a bar on occasion years back. Whenever the ID seemed sketchy, and especially when I knew the person was using someone else's, I'd ask for their birth date. The kids never bothered to check the pertinent info on someone else's ID and without fail they'd end up stumbling over some excuse/begging me to let them in. Good times.

 

[Armchair_QB]

Had one in college but it didn't involve any doctoring. Just gave an older guy in my dorm a case of beer for his old ID.

One trick I never tried but some friends had success with worked like this:

My home state issued laminated IDs & DLs back then so they would cut their photo off their old ID with an exacto knife and do the same with an ID from a guy who was legal. Marry up your photo with the older guy's ID, apply a hot iron to glue the two together and, presto, new ID. It was damn near foolproof as long as you cut right along the edge of the photos.

Eventually the state added a watermark to the lamination and then a signature along the edge of the photo before they finally went to the "credit card' style license.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

Worked the door at a bar on occasion years back. Whenever the ID seemed sketchy, and especially when I knew the person was using someone else's, I'd ask for their birth date. The kids never bothered to check the pertinent info on someone else's ID and without fail they'd end up stumbling over some excuse/begging me to let them in. Good times.

In my younger days bouncers at the many of the clubs here were trained to ask their astrological sign. Most people knew their birthdays.

My fraternity brother had a BAD fake ID that was confiscated at a bar-restaurant when we went out to dinner. The fake made him look Mexican. We teased him that he was using a Fernando Valenzuela baseball card as an ID.