A senior boy gets in line at a liquor store, trembling.

“I was super nervous, my hands were shaking as I gave the employee my ID,” he said. It was the 18-year-old’s first time using a fake ID, and he didn’t know what to expect.

This student isn’t alone. Fake IDs are readily available to high school students, giving them easy access to alcohol. Despite the risks, their popularity remains high as increasingly sophisticated IDs are manufactured, making it much harder for stores to catch minors buying alcohol.

“At Whitman, they’re pretty common with upperclassmen, especially seniors,” a senior girl said.

Overseas Ordering

The path to the student’s purchase began months before, with a wire transfer of a few hundred dollars to China.

Most fake IDs are ordered from China, and it is shockingly easy to get one. A search for “Maryland fake IDs” yields over 600,000 Google results, and the websites are not blocked by MCPS or censored in any way.

Students often order their IDs in bulk to reduce the price. Maryland Fakes, the top hit on Google, advertises $150 IDs, but one junior boy said he paid only $50 when he ordered with a group.

After gathering money from this group, a senior girl sent $700 to China via Western Union wire service, which the students “were all nervous about.” Since she paid in cash, there was no credit card record of the transaction, and the payment could not be traced back to her.

The girl said the IDs came in three weeks and, overall, called the transaction “easy.”

Not every group has the success that this group did. The websites selling these fake IDs are often unreliable. There’s always a chance that the companies won’t send the IDs, so it’s hard for buyers to know which websites and organizations to trust.

Last year, a group of students paid for fakes and never received them.

“I was surprised we didn’t get them because it was a well-known source for getting fake IDs,” said a senior boy, who paid $80.

The War on Fakes

Once the fake ID arrives, the risks grow. Instead of worrying about getting their money to China, the recent buyers have other concerns: the police, liquor store clerks, app developers, and even Congress.

In August of 2012, a bipartisan group of senators pressured China to shut down a popular fake ID website, ID Chief. The site was taken down, and while the effort worked at first, the site is back up and running today. A 2012 Senate press release said that the government hopes to eliminate such sites in the future, but the effort seems impossible, considering their availability to minors. No apparent progress has been made since then.

While Congress attacks the problem holistically, individual liquor stores also try to catch fake IDs using technology, notably a machine that scans IDs for authenticity by using a black light.

But companies have fought back. They’ve made their fake IDs seemingly immune to the technology, increasing confidence in users, as one senior girl noted.

“My ID scans and passes black light tests,” she said, “so I shouldn’t ever really be caught.”

Peter Frank, manager of Talbert’s Ice on River Road, and the rest of the Talbert’s staff don’t have detection technology, but they’ve had some success using just their eyes. Behind the counter, a case full of well over 100 confiscated IDs hangs from the ceiling to intimidate potential buyers.

Frank believes that some IDs are too sophisticated to even be detected by black light and other similar tests, he said.

“Some of them are manufactured so well,” he said, “machinery won’t discern them.”

But determining the authenticity of an ID by its appearance is getting harder as well. Some of the IDs in Talbert’s case barely looked like a real driver’s license, and many weren’t even made out of plastic.

“It looks really legit compared to the laminated pieces of paper they used to use,” one alum (‘14) said of her new ID.

Detection technology companies aren’t backing down. New technology to check authenticity of IDs is currently being developed. Intellicheck Mobilisa, a security technology company, has developed an iPhone app called BarZapp that verifies the legitimacy of an ID. The app scans the IDs barcode to ensure it matches the standard barcode for whatever state the ID is from.

Bill White, Chief Financial Officer of Intellicheck Mobilisa, said that the app is necessary to combat the improved technology of fake IDs.

“They’re getting very good. With your naked eye, you aren’t able to tell,” White said.

The Legal Price

Even though purchasing alcohol can sometimes be easy, the students aren’t always safe. They still have to keep an eye out for law enforcement or they’ll face heavier penalties than they might expect.

Getting caught with a fake in Maryland could result in a year-long driver’s license suspension, a $500 fine and up to 60 days in jail. But some students aren’t concerned with the legal penalties.

“The chances I will be caught are very slim because of the quality of my ID,” the senior girl said, adding that some nearby liquor stores have been known to just confiscate fake IDs or kick minors out of the store if they’re caught, rather than get the police involved.

Talbert’s Frank agreed, saying they mostly confiscate the fake IDs, but it isn’t always the case.

“When there’s a dispute, and they stand there and argue with us, we pick up the phone and call the police,” Frank said, “and the police make the determination.”

The student makes it out of the store safely, alcohol in hand, and breathes a sigh of relief. He’s just made his first purchase with a fake ID.