Warning over Aussie driver's licence trend attracting $2,200 fine
A quick glance at the ID card pictured above, and it's easy to assume there's nothing untoward going on. However on a closer look, the card — which resembles a driver's licence — has several minuscule details which point to the fact that it's a fake, and using one can land its owners in serious trouble.
While it has all of the signature markings of a NSW driver's licence, including personal information and the signature waratah plant in the centre, the top reads 'student identification'. No such official document exists, with the closest being a NSW photo card, which is traditionally teal, not yellow.
An underground trend of possessing such cards has prompted a warning about the serious consequences of using a fake driver's licence, with fines as high as $2,200 and 10 years in jail for those proven to be using them fraudulently.
It comes as analysis by leading lawyers reveals Aussies across all states are consistently searching the term "fake ID" every year, with the fake items being openly sold online, according to Astor Legal's Avinash Singh. What's more, there's little the police can do to stop websites like Fakies selling the $79 "novelty ID's".
Singh described the sale and purchase of fake licences as "a bit of a grey area" in Australia, with legislation largely geared towards how they are used, rather than the fact that they are sold in the first place.
"There is a real range in terms of how they are being used and what police do," he told Yahoo News.
The first, he explained, are young people under 18 who "use them to get entry into licensed premises".
The second category of people use them in connection with fraud and criminal enterprises, with one common use, Singh sees being disqualified drivers. "A disqualified driver will get a fake ID to continue driving and hope that if they are stopped by police they can get away with having a fake ID where police don't detect them on their system."
Disqualified drivers and those using them to break the law, he said are "certainly criminal offences".
"If it's being used in connection with anything fraudulent, the maximum penalty is 10 years' imprisonment," he said. Singh says drivers caught using fake licences can be fined $2,200 and charged with perverting the course of justice, which can also carry jail time.
"Some of them are very convincing, and some even have the hologram, one of the main security features, detecting whether an ID is fake or not," he explained.
Young people caught with fake ID's will generally have them confiscated, but won't be charged with an offence. "There's no real criminality in having one," Singh explained.
Singh explained that seeing offences pass through the legal system is relatively common, with "over 300" cases involving fake ID's in recent years, with 100 people sentenced to imprisonment.
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Ciara Devlin, a PhD candidate with the University of Technology Sydney's forensic science department, told Yahoo that what's more important than who is using the documents, is who is making them.
Visual profiling of over 100 licences confiscated by authorities leads Devlin to suspect that methods and techniques are being repeated.
"My research is promising in that it indicates to us that there may be more organisation to the marketplace than previously anticipated," she explained.
"The thing that needs to be examined more closely is where that document has come from, who is the producer and who else are they supplying?" she said, adding "we know document fraud is occurring in Australia, no idea of the extent of it".
Her research revealed that Australia's driver's licences are the second most sold fake document in the world on the dark web, behind only the United States.
Driver's licences, she explained, are easier to counterfeit than passports, with Australian passports one of the most difficult documents to fake due to their advanced security features. However, because of Australia's identification verification system, driver's licences "provide access to a lot of things", she explained.
The "100 points of ID" threshold is a system in Australia to identify a person's identity. A compelling fake driver's licence, alongside several other ID documents, can "provide access" to more complex documents like passports.
But it's difficult to know how prevalent "high-quality" fraudulent documents are, because the licences seized by authorities are obviously fake.
"The ones seized are the really low quality ones," she explained, adding that they are "easily identified" as fraudulent. "We don't really know how prevalent higher-quality documents are."
"While document fraud is a really serious problem, the most serious aspect of it is a level above the everyday users trying to gain access to restricted services," she said.
"But the one thing to keep in mind is that the seriousness of the criminal act. Most law enforcement focus on the individual holding the individual document."
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