By Laura Swofford

It was September 2004 and Ashley Madden was beginning her sophomore year at Northeastern. With $100 in one hand and a knot in her stomach, she gathered with about 20 people in a “friend of a friend of a friend’s” dorm room and posed for the digital camera.

Madden was about to make an investment into one of the latest twists on a well-known underground business: a student-manufactured fake ID.

“It sounded really sketchy, but I figured all these situations are,” said Madden, a marketing major. “We looked up other peoples’ addresses to use on the Internet, our friends sent our digital pictures and the information we had found online to someone via e-mail and a week later I was 21 years old and from New Jersey.”

Since the entire business transaction was conducted over e-mail, she never had to meet the person who would be helping her drink illegally for the next two years.

“The ID never got questioned,” Madden said. “It got me into bars, I could use it at Shaw’s to buy liquor and it even worked at a liquor store in New Hampshire, which is supposedly one of the most strict states.”

Now, due to Web sites like www.21Overnight.com (motto: “Age is nothing but a number!”), using the old ID of a friend or sibling who shares a strong resemblance is no longer necessary. Becoming legal is, in some cases, just a mouse-click away.

Madden is one of a growing college generation who turned 21 years before her birth certificate indicated she would.

Technological advancements in the last decade have made life easy on minors who don’t have an older sibling’s duplicate license to rely on; fakers need little more than Adobe PhotoShop, a color printer and a lamination machine to turn out a semblance of a real ID.

The underage students’ demand for fake IDs has always existed. But in today’s computer-savvy society the opportunity to counterfeit exists in several ways – whether it be an online ID purchase or a homemade production.

The risks manufacturers and users take are high. In the post-Sept. 11 world, altering a real ID, selling a reproduced license or producing false identification has changed from a misdemeanor to a felony – a charge that imposes punishments of up to five years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

Possessing or using an ID is a Class A misdemeanor, and while it sounds less severe, it could still mean a year in jail and up to a $1,000 fine, according to Massachusetts state law.

Last April legislators passed an ordinance that will automatically impose a $250 fine on every minor who has an ID confiscated, instead of the usual slap on the wrist of a confiscated license.

“It’s going to depend on your representation, and the county the case is heard in, but of the kids I have represented, I’ve seen a lot of expulsions from school as well as convictions for kids who are manufacturing IDs,” said Richard Chambers, a Saugus-based criminal lawyer. “The difference between a misdemeanor and a felony is at least a year in jail.”

In April 2005, Madden lost confidence in the system. As she walked out of a Shaw’s grocery store on a Friday night after she and a friend had bought a box of white wine, men in plain clothes approached her to reveal Boston Police Department badges under their buttoned-up shirts. Questioning her about the wine, they requested to see her identification, so she hesitantly produced her New Jersey license.

“I was opening my wallet to get a credit card I could show as backup and they saw my real license. I was so scared I was going to get arrested, sent to jail, but the cop was nice – he made me return the wine, took my information and confiscated the ID,” Madden said.

It was an eight-month run in the realm of legal-aged drinking, but she returned to being just another 19-year-old. She has no plans to get another fake ID.

The fakes and the fakers who make them

In a nervous tone, a sophomore at Providence College in Rhode Island reluctantly divulged the methods he used to supply the undergraduate student population with fake IDs from the state of Vermont.

“I hear this … is like, a felony in most states or something,” he said. But he immediately began to laugh, saying “making these things was so easy to do, it was sad.”

Using blank ID cards with magnetic strips bought off www.eBay.com, photo quality paper and a lamination machine, the Providence College student and his business associate did nothing more than visit the Web site of the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles and simply cut and paste.

“I know most kids these days are using PhotoShop, but we put ours together by hand,” he said. “We just looked at examples of real licenses and basically pasted and copied them together ourselves.”

Their system was flawless. The customers never saw him, as his friend would be the one to take the digital picture in his own room and would bring the photo to him. No one knew he was involved in the process.

“This way, if anyone ever ratted us out and someone came to seize his computer, all the templates and information would be on mine. No one would ever be able to find me,” he said. “We would charge these silly little freshman $50 and by the time we stopped we were ahead $1,600. We both felt as though it was getting too risky.”

Coupling profits like these with very little work and such high stakes, this business is comparable to the drug market. The manufacturers are the dealers, the students are the users – but it might seem that with money so good, the supplier, not the consumer, could become the addict.

Adobe PhotoShop seems to be the technique of choice among the skilled fakers. A 23-year-old graduate of Wentworth Institute of Technology, was supplied with all the tools he needed as high school graduation gifts by his parents: the laptop, the metallic printer and PhotoShop. After the purchase of a lamination machine, he was in business.

“It’s like they were asking to be faked, the licenses looked like Blockbuster cards,” said the 23-year-old, referencing the licenses from New Jersey, Rhode Island and Maine which he reproduced in his freshman dorm room. “Certain numbers and letters at the bottom correspond with your birthday, letters in your name, sometimes even your height – you study the ID off the DMV Web sites of the particular state. They practically give you the blueprint.”

In New York, however, the under-21 crowd employs another method for obtaining fake IDs. Using a method Empire staters call “chalking,” colored pencils can be used to change the birth date and expiration date on the license.

Jacqueline McDermott, a senior broadcast journalism major at Boston University, said she and her friends used to get into 18+ clubs when they were 16.

“Everyone was doing it,” McDermott said. “With the yellow colored pencil, all you have to do is change the year you were born and the expiration date because New York licenses aren’t laminated like most states. The white colored pencil was used to change numbers in the lower right corner that correspond – you have to make sure you change those too.”

The best part was the convenience of being able to rub the colored pencil off any time, McDermott said. “I used to do it in high school, but I still have friends who used chalked IDs here in Boston and it works most places,” she said.

McDermott wasn’t the only high school student duping the law with her ID.

Len Karan, a middler business major, said he talked his way out of fake ID trouble when he was only 17. “Sketchy Nate,” as his ID supplier was called, manufactured close-to-perfect Massachusetts IDs for much of Marblehead Senior High School.

“I happened to get a fake from [Sketchy Nate] at school, and when the cops busted him, my picture and information was the last one on the PhotoShop program.

They said that if I signed a statement saying I got my ID from him that I wouldn’t get in trouble. The cops make bargains like that all the time,” Karan said.

While making the IDs might not be all that difficult, no one stays in the business for too long. Quitting while ahead is a technique these fakers have mastered, the Providence College ID-faker said.

One phone call was enough to convince a current architecture major at Wentworth Institute of Technology, that this business just wasn’t worth it.

“I used to make them, until I called my good friend’s house one day in high school who I knew manufactured IDs and his mom politely said he wouldn’t be back for three to five years,” the Wentworth architecture major said.

Too much is never enough

Nearly every night, Comedy Central runs programs of comedians speaking openly about many issues relevant to college students. In one sketch, comic Jim Breuer discussed the world of drinking before and after you are allowed to drink legally.

“To me, if you’re over 21 and you get hammered, it’s just plain goofy,” he said, stumbling around the stage feigning intoxication. “The only time drinking was fun was when you were a kid, I’m talking 16, 17, 18 years old, when drinking was an Olympic sport.”

However, most experts say this is also the time when drinking is the most dangerous.

A 2001 study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health showed that 43.6 percent of underage students were classified as binge drinkers, meaning they regularly consume more than five or more consecutive alcoholic beverages when they drink.

The same study showed underage students were more likely than others to do something they regretted while under the influence of alcohol and even showed they were more likely to forget where they were or what they did the night before.

“A lot of students think of adults trying to keep them from having a fake ID as a big conspiracy to keep the younger kids from having fun,” said James Ferrier, associate director of public safety. “Alcohol abuse among freshmen and sophomores is the most common reason we find kids in the ER getting their stomachs pumped, or get into fights, are the victims of sexual abuse and don’t perform up to their academic potential.”

John Moulden, president of the National Resource Center for Alcohol Abuse, said handling alcohol responsibly comes only with time.

“It’s completely a maturity thing, and we learned this when the drinking age was lowered in the 1970s,” Moulden said. “The statistics were clear. When we lowered the drinking age to 18, the death toll in traffic accidents went up significantly. When we raised it to 21 again in 1984, the death toll went down drastically. The results are there. Before the age of 21, most kids just can’t handle drinking responsibly.”

Ralph Hingson, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, said the lower drinking age in European countries in no way stops binge drinking among minors.

“Most people think that having a lower legal drinking age will teach kids to drink responsibly,” Hingson said. “People think in Europe they have it all figured out. It’s exactly the opposite. Studies conducted surveying 15-year-olds in 30 European countries are finding kids are still drinking illegally; it’s just starting a lot earlier. Having a lower legal drinking age just means kids start drinking at a younger age.”

Hingson and Moulden are just two professors working to educate others on the severity of underage drinking on college campuses.

Catch me if you can

The struggle between police and bouncers and the underage students who are trying to pass for 21 has become an ongoing game of cat and mouse. Students know, for the most part, where they can and cannot go around Boston. Bars that need the business are more likely to let in the underage drinkers, while other bars pride themselves on their reputation for strictness.

Justin Simmons, 21, is a bouncer at Tequila Rain on Landsdowne Street, which is notorious among minors for being hard to get into.

“We go through rigorous ID training which usually involves looking at a lot of real IDs and a lot of fake IDs. Each one has a little characteristic which lets you know whether it is authentic. A lot of times the hologram will be off, it won’t glow under a black light or there will be white around the head of the picture, which lets you know it has been Photo Shopped,” Simmons said.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) training, as explained on the Bureau’s Web site, is much the same as Simmons’ and also teaches officers and bouncers to converse with the cardholder to gauge their confidence, or ask them an obscure question such as their astrological sign.

The three different types of IDs the FBI describes on their Web site, www.fbi.gov, are fake IDs, which should be checked for things like typeface of the letters and placement of the photograph, altered IDs, which should be checked for numbers that have been scratched out or inked over, and borrowed IDs, which should be questioned for even the slightest discrepancies in physical appearance.

But many times, getting caught does not take a thorough examination. Ferrier said negligent students often have themselves to blame for getting caught.

“In so many instances, we are going through a lost and found wallet and we find more than one ID. Or if we ask a student for identification, when they reach for their ID we will see more than one in the wallet,” he said. “They make it too easy for us to catch them.”

More Partners Join in the Fight

An enormous wall of licenses, the majority from Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, arranged in perfectly straight rows, hangs at Huntington Wine ‘ Liquors on Huntington Avenue. The wall, dubbed the “Wall of Shame,” by store clerks has approximately 50 fake IDs total.

General Manager Chris King stared at the wall proudly and said there is another board from last year upstairs.

Strategically placed behind the cash register, the incriminating pictures of students’ failed attempts to purchase liquor hang for all their peers to see. In some instances, phrases like “My mom’s gonna kill me!” and “You’re stupid if you think I look 21” are scrawled in permanent black marker across their faces.

“This is one of our most obvious deterrents, but we also pride ourselves in being known across campus as really tough on IDs. It’s really a word-of-mouth thing and liquor stores know that. We also usually tend to be the most strict in the beginning of the school year, to make sure freshmen know this is one place they cannot come,” King said.

The manufacturers, however, are much harder to monitor and punish. Adobe spokesman Ryan Luckin of A’R Partners said the company is working on anti-counterfeiting software.

“We have made it so there are legal restrictions on what you can do with images of U.S. currency, and while I’m not aware of plans for software to deter identification manufacturing, we should be thinking about it. We know that people using PhotoShop for this purpose is a huge problem, we just don’t know what to do about it yet,” Luckin said.

No matter how extensive the training, it is possible that even the well-trained eye will let one or two fake IDs slip, putting the store or bar at risk of having their liquor license revoked or being shut down.

The abundance of minors who have caused trouble around Boston managed to catch the eye of legislators looking for new ways to combat underage drinking. Last April, Massachusetts legislature unanimously passed an ordinance that automatically tags anyone caught using false identification with a $250 fine.

This money will be recycled into programs to curb drinking among minors around the city, and make students think before they spend more money on yet a second fake after paying their $250 fine, according to the ordinance.

“It sounds like if this legislation actually passes it could mean good things for the city. Kids get them [IDs] taken away and they get new ones all the time,” King said. “I bet we will see results.”

Editor’s note: This article has been edited since appearing in the print edition of The Northeastern News because of miscommunication between a source and the writer.