CHICAGO-
Twenty-two people have been charged with taking part in a bustling, multi-million-dollar counterfeit ring that produced several thousand bogus identification documents a year, federal authorities said Wednesday.
The fake documents, from driver’s licenses to Social Security cards, could help criminals and even terrorists blend into society, said Elissa Brown, an official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Investigations in Chicago.
Twelve defendants were arrested Tuesday in Chicago, and ten others are fugitives, including four believed to be in Mexico, officials said.
The arrests “represent a significant setback to one of the largest and most sophisticated illegal document fraud rings in the United States,” Brown said.
According to the complaint affidavit, the fraudulent-document organization started in Mexico and also is thought to be active in Los Angeles and Denver.
In Chicago, the operation focused on the predominantly Mexican Little Village neighborhood and was run mainly by Mexicans; but their customers were a range of nationalities, from Poles to Nigerians, and even American citizens, authorities said.
The ring involved the use of illegal aliens working on street corners and in parking lots; they would take orders for and then deliver the false IDs, which also included Resident Alien Cards, commonly referred to as Green Cards, authorities said.
The Chicago operation, which produced as many as 100 documents a day and charged customers up to $300 for a set of two or three documents, generated up to $3 million in illegal proceeds a year, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said.
The ring’s alleged leader in Chicago, Julio Leija-Sanchez, 31, of Oak Lawn, sought to have two rivals in the document business killed in Mexico, and he was among those arrested, Fitzgerald said. Leija-Sanchez is charged with conspiracy to commit murder outside the United States and with conspiring to illegally produce IDs.
There was no telephone listing for a Julio Leija-Sanchez in Oak Lawn.
The investigation culminated Tuesday with search warrants at four Chicago locations: a basement apartment where fake documents allegedly were produced, two homes, and a photo shop at a discount mall in Little Village, officials said.
Gun-wielding federal agents closed and locked down the mall during the daytime raid, while investigators conducted searches and made arrests.
Neighborhood activists said agents used excessive force in the raid, accusing authorities of wanting to intimidate the Hispanic community in the lead up to immigration-reform marches planned for May 1.
Fitzgerald denied that.
“I can assure everyone that the arrests yesterday had nothing to do with a rally that’s upcoming,” he said. “This was not an effort to send any message to anyone—other than those who traffic in counterfeit documents.”
