By FLOYD WHALEY
Published: November 7, 2011
MANILA — On a quiet residential street behind a shopping mall, the important business of the president of the Philippines was being conducted by a dedicated government agency: the office of Presidential Regional Assistance Monitoring Services.
Jes Aznar for The International Herald Tribune
Hawkers called out to prospective customers in downtown Manila.
Jes Aznar for The International Herald Tribune
Fake identification cards, including driver’s licenses, were on display in Manila.
With crisp blue uniforms and impressive identification cards bearing the seal of the president of the Philippines, officers of the agency were tasked with overseeing vital sanitation projects and the sensitive job of collecting taxes.
The only problem, according to police and prosecutors: It was all a fake.
“I have been on the police force since 1980, and I have never seen a case like this,” said Ranier Idio, a senior police superintendent who led the investigation of the group. “They created a fake presidential agency. That is very bold.”
Underpinning the scheme was a set of expertly forged fake documents: impressive identification cards, a bogus letterhead, falsified letters of appointment to government jobs. All adorned with the seal of the president. Not even the name of the agency was real.
Those arrested were audacious, but the tools they used were not. In the Philippines, forging documents — including driver’s licenses, vehicle registration papers, college diplomas and just about anything else — is not the sole purview of master criminals and terrorists. It is done on street corners by hawkers wearing sandwich boards.
Near the corner of Rizal and Claro M. Recto Avenues in Manila, people can be seen every few paces carrying placards with examples of the falsified documents they offer. The selection is jaw-dropping. Every type of identity document — including voter registration cards, passports and employee IDs — is available. As are all types of medical certifications, showing, for example, that one has passed the national board exam to become an X-ray technician. Official documents showing board certification as an engineer are also for sale.
The tragic results of this proliferation of bogus documents can be seen regularly in local news reports. Investigations of fatal accidents reveal falsified road worthiness certificates for buses and fake licenses held by drivers. Fake doctors are periodically exposed, often after tragic consequences for their patients. Diploma mills churning out fake pilots have recently been investigated. Filipinos seeking visas to travel overseas or showing professional certifications to work in other countries face increased scrutiny, and sometimes rejection, because of this prolific trade.
The government authorities say they are aware of the problem. Manila’s mayor, Alfredo Lim, has ordered several crackdowns, resulting in arrests. But it has had little impact. The fake document traders play a game of cat and mouse with the police. They hold signs advertising their services along the street but do the actual forgeries behind doors in nearby apartments.
During a recent visit to the area, which is in a gritty commercial district not far from the Manila City Hall, two aggressive young hawkers were asked whether they could produce a U.S. Social Security card. They responded that they could in about an hour for 2,500 pesos, or about $60.
Annoyed uniformed police officers could be seen moving through the densely packed street trying to collect the placards and sandwich boards while hawkers scrambled to hide. As the police moved down the sidewalk, the traders re-emerged in their wake and immediately resumed dealing their wares alongside sellers of pirated DVDs, newspaper vendors and cellphone repair shops.
One group of fake-document traders has prominently displayed its signs directly in front of the police substation in the area, at the corner of Rizal Avenue and Doroteo Jose Street. The beleaguered-looking police officer inside did not appear motivated to go after them.
One older, jovial vendor had had the temerity to put up a fixed stand to hawk his fake documents. Like a lawyer dispensing advice, he listened carefully to a potential client’s request for a birth certificate. He claimed that he could produce a Philippine birth certificate on special security paper and that his clients regularly used his products to obtain passports. He said it took about an hour and would cost 1,500 pesos.
When asked who his customers were, he said he was helping regular people who lack documents to obtain passports or jobs. “I am doing a service,” he said.
Government officials agree that the trade is driven by ordinary people, many from remote areas of the Philippines, who lack authentic basic documents, like birth certificates and school transcripts. Those who buy their diplomas in the Claro M. Recto Avenue area are derisively said to have graduated from “Recto University.”
Jes Aznar for The International Herald Tribune
Customers checked out phony documents.
Career criminals might also use the services of those hawking fake documents in the area, but many customers are provincial folks freshly arrived from the southern islands of the Philippines looking to find a job in the big city. And they risk being scammed by the forgers, officials say.
“We have seen fake IDs and other falsified documents come from this area, and they are not comparable to the authentic items,” said Carolyn Moldez-Pitoy, supervising document examiner with the National Bureau of Investigation’s Questioned Documents Division. “They are detectable fakes.”
She did note, however, that the sheer volume of fake documents being produced in the Recto area adds to the workload of her department, which is the Philippine government’s primary analyst of falsified documents.
“Government agencies are becoming more innovative and making it more difficult to falsify official documents,” she said. “But the con artists in that area are also using more advanced technology to try to keep up.”
Those who now face criminal charges for creating the fake presidential agency — including the charge of “unauthorized use of the seal of the president” — probably did not obtain their falsified documents from the Recto area, officials said. They appeared to have had their own in-house document-forging equipment and expertise, said Mr. Idio, the senior police superintendent.
When asked whether falsified documents played an important role in the work of the criminals he pursues, Mr. Idio produced a “most wanted” list from a nearby shelf. He noted that most of the people on the list robbed banks and added: “Bank robbers don’t carry ID.”
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