Are we committing fraud?

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Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:44 pm

^^

Well, I'm not a lawyer either. Moreover, I'm in Canada, so what I do know about law is more applicable to Dominion law than US Federal law. However. The answer to your question as to "why"... well. My first answer would be to make things as unclear as possible! The more definitions they assign to a given word, the easier it is to do whatever they want.

When I become dictatress of the Dominion, I'm going to pass a law that says all words used in legislation have to use the definition specified in the Oxford standard dictionary! Wink

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:01 pm

As far as making fake IDs is concerned... I think there are some companies that make fake IDs for people to buy for giggles. Novelties. The only one I can think of offhand is an alien abduction or alien (as in UFO) driving license.

There are some that will even include your picture on them. They look fairly realistic but include the word 'facsimile', 'invalid' or something similar. AFAIK, the makers do not get in trouble because:

a) The thing was sold as a novelty.
b) The ones I'm thinking of are marked as being fake.

The last I heard, the police don't care for them because a careless person might accept them as real (for instance, at a bar). But from what I remember, they can't do much since the fake IDs are sold as fake and labeled as fake.

Maybe the laws have changed since I last heard about this - I know the IDs have - but I don't think creating and using a Kellogg's Club Card is going to get you in trouble with the law. Creating a realistic-ish passport (for your own amusement, of course) with Pamela Anderson's photograph and the name Rhonda Goodbody probably won't get you in trouble either unless you actually try to use it to fly somewhere.

US currency can be duplicated legally, from what I remember, as long as there are three noticeable differences between the duplicates and the original. You can trade these with your friends as much as you want. But try to pass off the fakes as real at a store? You get in trouble for trying to pass counterfeited money.

There's one guy (darn, I can't remember his name...) who's an artist and creates currency art. He draws on pieces of paper that are roughly the size of a dollar bill, only on one side, and are quite obviously not real but still look like 'money'. He'll then take these pieces of artwork and attempt to barter them for some goods or services. Some people will accept them, some people will pay him extra, some people will turn him down and others try to get him arrested for counterfeiting. But they can't touch him because there's no way a normal person could reasonably assume that the 'bills' are REAL.

I would guess that something similar applies to fake IDs, although don't quote me on that.

It'd still not be a good idea to give a lad a close-to-realistic looking fake passport, state ID or something similar. The kind of people who fall for scams in the first place are bound to accept that kind of thing.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:08 pm

I know a source or two where for $50 (last time I checked, around 1999 or 2000) you could get driver's licence, passport and other ID... some of it extremely realistic. Except your choice of countries were things like the British West Indies and the Soviet Union. Both defunct nations by then, so not in technicality a counterfeit I guess but more just bogus, even so, I know a mate of mine had the whole kit of BWI IDs, and they got accepted surprisingly often - and not always by your average corner store operator. The point is that even otherwise alert and intelligent people might get taken in by a fake ID that's good enough...

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:21 pm

^^^ Not going to argue that someone won't get taken by a realistic looking ID. But I don't think they're literally illegal and can't really be fraud if they're not illegal.

That said, I wouldn't go much beyond a Kellogg's Club Card or the cycling proficiency certificate that someone else gave a mugu.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 7103 Location: Yes

I think that rather than rely upon "someone once told me" or even this forum's lawyers (who should be concentrating on work, rather than providing free legal advice herein -- myself included Wink

) we should simply stop talking about fake IDs as (a) we don't do those here, and (b) nothing good will come of it.

So, let's consider this a friendly warning to leave that topic alone. Smile

419Eater is my life Joined: 22 Sep 2008 Posts: 381

^^ Fair enough.