CBP Seizes More Than 4,300 Fake Driver’s Licenses From China

The licenses could have been used by foreign terrorist organizations and criminal organizations, an area port director in Chicago said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington on Aug. 12, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A total of 485 shipments containing fake driver’s licenses and counterfeit watches were seized in Chicago last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on May 1.

The shipments, which originated from Hong Kong and China, contained 4,345 fake driver’s licenses and 516 counterfeit watches.

The licenses were destined for locations across the United States.

“These counterfeit driver’s licenses can lead to disastrous consequences,” Michael Pfeiffer, area port director in Chicago, said in a statement.

“Foreign Terrorist Organizations, criminal organizations, and persons involved in fraud schemes use these counterfeit IDs to avoid attracting attention to their illegal activities. Our CBP officers were able to identify these very realistic counterfeits and stop them from reaching their destinations.”

The seized watches, which featured the logos of brands including Rolex, Patek Philippe, Cartier, Omega, and Audemars Piguet, would have a total suggested retail price of more than $9.22 million if authentic.

“Intellectual property [IP] theft threatens America’s economic vitality and funds criminal activities as well as organized crime,” LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, director of field operations in the Chicago Field Office, said in a statement.

The seizures took place at Chicago’s international mail facility, express consignment operations hub, cargo examination station, and O’Hare International Airport.

The American Automobile Association and the American Automobile Touring Alliance are the only two companies authorized by the State Department to print international driver’s licenses in the United States, according to CBP.

CBP’s announcement came two days after the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced in its annual report that it is keeping China on the agency’s priority watch list as the country’s pace of addressing IP protection and enforcement “remained slow” in 2024.

USTR said China continues to be the “world’s leading source of counterfeit and pirated goods,” and Chinese e-commerce markets “remain a source of widespread counterfeits.”

Citing CBP data, USTR stated that China and Hong Kong accounted for more than 93 percent of the value measured by manufacturers’ suggested retail price of counterfeit goods seized by U.S. customs officials in fiscal year 2024.

In terms of quantity seized, CBP stated that the top five commodities seized in fiscal year 2024 were handbags and wallets, pharmaceuticals, wearing apparel, sunglasses, and consumer electronics.

More than 5.1 million handbags and wallets were seized, with a total market value of more than $1 billion if authentic.

At midnight on May 2, a U.S. trade policy that is called the de minimis rule expires for Chinese imports, following President Donald Trump’s executive order in April to end the duty-free exception for imported goods worth less than $800.

Chinese shippers are known to have exploited the de minimis exception for shipping illicit drugs and counterfeit goods into the United States. In October last year, CBP said that the agency was processing about 4 million de minimis shipments per day, up from 2.8 million in 2023.

In January 2021, CBP officials in Cincinnati announced that they had seized 14,504 fraudulent identification items in the previous 12 months, including licenses, social security cards, laminates, passports, and visas. Ninety-seven percent of the seized items originated in China and Hong Kong.

“Fake documents are associated with identity theft, public benefit fraud, and human trafficking, and terrorists use them to evade travel screening measures,” Richard Gillespie, then-Cincinnati port director, said in a statement at the time.

CBP officials at Chicago O’Hare International Airport announced in July 2020 that they had seized 19,888 fake U.S. driver’s licenses in the past six months. The majority of the seized licenses came from Hong Kong and China, while the rest originated from the UK and South Korea.