Got a fake ID? Beware: Area stores have seen it all before

Store owners say fake licenses from warmer states are common

If you've got a fake ID chances are it resembles a driver's license from Florida, California, New York or New Jersey.

You are also most likely to use it late Friday or Saturday night - especially after a Wolverine football game or just before the hockey team takes the ice.

If you've paid some sketchy fellows with a lamination machine to make one for you, it will feel, look or even smell funny. If you are in possession of an older ID that once belonged to a friend/sibling you may slip up when asked about the ID's birthday, address or even the spelling of "your" name. If you've tried to change one of the numbers of your date of birth using a pen or computer printer, you may get laughed at.

Ann Arbor's bouncers and doormen, cashiers, managers and store owners say they have seen and heard it all. They say they are very strict about carding everyone who wants to buy liquor. They say they know what to look for when they look at an ID - and that they try very hard not to be fooled.

"There are six ways to tell if an ID is fake; they are secrets of the trade," says Bill Lagos, owner of Bill's Market and Deli at, 709 East Packard Rd. "I can go through them all in about five seconds while you stand there. And also, if you don't look like your picture I'll catch you too."

But fake IDs do work, at least some of the time and at least for some students.

"I had an ID taken away at (Village Corner) - my picture is still up over there and I've had people tell me they recognize me," said LSA senior Parag Desai, who is now 21. "I had four IDs at the time so it really wasn't a problem - it didn't slow me down much."

FILE PHOTO Primo Kang, owner of Blue Front, display prove that he will check your ID and take it away if it is a fake. Local store owners, managers, and other employees say that most of the time they catch students who show them some kind of fake ID.

At Village Corner, 601 South Forest St., Desai's ill-fated ID would have been cut to pieces and his picture plastered on walls, cash registers and counters with dozens of other identification mug shots.

"The police do checks - if we get caught we lose our liquor license and that will cost us our business," said a Village Corner cashier, who asked that his name not be published. "It's a problem here because of all the students."

Most beer and liquor stores in town have some kind of "Wall of Shame" paying homage to past users of fake IDs in one form or another. But Lagos said he doesn't see the need to put them on display.

"Why put them up when we can add them to our collection downstairs," he asked with a smile. "We have more than a hundred down there and we've never been wrong."

Some students who will admit to having a fake ID say they are using somebody else's old driver's license - a small square piece of plastic that they may or may not have memorized backward and forward.

"I just use a license that was my friend's - it looks enough like me that I usually don't have anyone ask me anything," said Sarah, an LSA sophomore who didn't want her last name published. "I really don't know anyone who actually had a fake one made for them - I've heard those look really bad."

Lagos said he thinks students do not have IDs made in the area. Instead, they tend to come back from vacation excursions to warmer climates armed with IDs that somebody made for them there - a practice that explains the overflow of obviously fake IDs from the sunnier states, he said.

But Gus Batwo, a manager at Campus Corner Party Store, says he has seen IDs that usually come from somebody's older fraternity brother or sorority sister.

"They have these IDs that are in the Greek houses and we see them sometimes," said Batwo, whose store is located at 818 South State St. Batwo said he does not keep fake IDs, only refuses sale of any kind of liquor.

"If there's any problem they don't get any beer," he said. "But I can't take away their property - that ID is still theirs."

And even though store and bar employees of all sorts have seen every trick in the book, it's not uncommon to encounter a new chapter.

"The funniest thing I had happen involved a guy who just didn't have an ID at all," said Ted Humphery, a manager at Diag Party Shoppe, 340 South State St. "He claimed to be a football player and was yelling and screaming when I wouldn't sell to him without his ID. He just kept yelling 'you'll know me one day when I'm famous.'

"I don't think he was ever famous."

09-17-98