US federal court judge, Jose Linares, has decided a five-year prison term against Jersey City resident Ricardo Rosario for his involvement in a fake driver’s license and tax refund schemes. In his ruling, Linares also ordered Rosario to return over $350,000 and serve three years of supervised release.
Rosario and his cohorts were involved in two separate schemes involving the sale of custom-made high-quality fake identification documents on the Internet and the fraudulent collection of tax refund checks.
The fake licenses were utilized in “cash-out” schemes in which stolen credit card data were encoded to forged credit cards to steal cash from the accounts of the victims.
Buyers of the fake licenses used Bitcoin or MoneyPak, a prepaid payment card that is usually purchased at retail stores, in their transactions to avoid detection.
Their modus operandi
According to authorities, Rosario established and operated a website that was available at “fakeidstore.com” and “fakedlstore.com” to sell fake driver’s licenses. His cohorts, Abraham Corcino and Alexis Scott Carthens, were responsible for producing and mailing the fake licenses that were bought through the website. The website allegedly implemented the “No refunds. No snitching” rule to its users.
The website had allegedly charged around $150 per fake license. It also offered a bulk pricing package for orders of 10 or more licenses.
The group operated their schemes for two years beginning in October 2012 in the states of New Jersey, Florida, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Illinois.
Meanwhile, Rosario’s partner Corcino has already received a sentence of three years of probation in early 2017. Carthens, on the other hand, is scheduled for sentencing on Sep. 28, 2017.