Man, You Gonna Card Me?

WILDWOOD – Every summer, local bartenders, servers, and liquor store clerks are faced with an influx of liquor-seeking underage patrons toting fake identification cards. 
Since 2002, over 5,600 patrons with bogus or no IDs have been turned away in Cape May County, said James Plousis, founder of the “We Check for 21” campaign and a former Cape May County sheriff.
“We’ve prevented a lot of tragedy out there,” he said, regarding underage drinking and driving.
One of the campaign’s goals is to give sellers the skills to spot fake identification cards.
County servers have taken the Fake Identification Training course, funded by county and state government, annually since Plousis started the campaign when he was sheriff 26 years ago.
Over 700 liquor licensees and staff attended training in the Wildwoods Convention Center June 19.
“You have a business to run, but you’ve got to protect your business,” said identity document specialist Joseph Vasil, who taught the course. “You’ve got a responsibility to the public.”
Although training was voluntary, many businesses required their employees to attend.
Phil Giangiulio, a server at the Lobster House, had been asked by the restaurant to take the course annually since he started working there four years ago.
“I recently learned that the state of Pennsylvania changed how their state IDs looks,” he said. “Previously, they were one of the easiest IDs to fake.”
A liquor licensee can be shut if caught serving alcohol to an underage patron, Vasil said.
“(Alcoholic Beverage Control) only comes in (to investigate a business) if you’re known to sell to underage,” he said. “They’re going to go where there’s a problem. They handle complaints.”
Training focused on visual cues that separate real drivers’ licenses from fake ones, especially in licenses from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware. Vasil showed trainees confiscated counterfeits.
“(A driver’s license) is the most trusted form of identification in the United States,” he said.
All New Jersey licenses feature a holographic state seal and “ghost” image, and always pass flashlight and black light tests. They never include a full middle name, Vasil said.
But other clues were more subtle.
“A lot of states, after four or five years, they choose to switch up security features to make sure the licenses don’t look the same as they did five years ago,” Vasil said.
Some licenses looked believable until examined closely, he said. “Hook-and-ball” commas instead of apostrophes next to height measurements indicated a fake.
Where the eye color is listed, he said, the first “E” in “EYE” has a shorter middle line than the last “E.” Micro-printing around the Motor Vehicle Commission logo reads “The Garden State,” but when counterfeiters try to copy real licenses, the text doesn’t reproduce.
“Counterfeiters will go to school on what you guys do,” Vasil told the trainees. “It’s amazing what counterfeiters will do.”
New Jersey licenses previously expired on the last day of the month, so expiration dates on other days of the month were a giveaway. But starting this year, Vasil said, the expiration date will fall on the licensee’s birthday.
If a server suspects an ID is fake, Vasil told trainees not to confiscate the ID because the suspect could harm them.
“You want to go home at night,” he said.
He told trainees to give the ID back and call the police or ask the patron to wait while they call the police to verify if the ID is real.
“They usually run away,” he said, “And the ID becomes abandoned.”
Giangiulio said the skills he learned at training in past years have helped him spot fake IDs at work.
“The way the person acted ultimately gave it away,” he said.
“We Check for 21” started in Cape May County in 1992 and grew to a statewide campaign that, today, represents 700 liquor establishments.
To contact Taylor Henry, email thenry@cmcherald.com.