Border patrol agents must see thousands of phony drivers licenses, Social Security cards and birth certificates in the course of their duties.
But the ones they found on illegal immigrant Orlando Castaneda-Diaz had to be the easiest ones to crack.
Diaz presented his fake papers to a border crossing agent claiming to be David, an American citizen.
But the agent immediately knew Diaz wasn’t David, because David was a fellow Border Patrol agent.
When Border Patrol agents checked a bus passenger’s papers at the Falfurrias checkpoint last week, they did a double-take.
The bus passenger handed them a driver’s license identifying himself as David, a 34-year-old man from Edinburg, according to federal court records.
Along with the driver’s license, the man had a birth certificate and a Social Security card identifying him as David.
Border Patrol agents working the checkpoint at 1 a.m. Thursday, though, knew David — and he wasn’t the guy on the bus.
They would have recognized him: David is a fellow Border Patrol agent assigned to the Falfurrias area, according to federal court records.
Diaz was arrested and questioned.
Castaneda-Diaz said he bought the documents from a man in Matamoros for $2,000, according to the criminal complaint, and had never met the real David.
It was just dumb luck that got Diaz nabbed. However, it does open the question of how many of these phony documents are being sold in Mexico, how many “David’s” are now illegally in the U.S. with all the documents they need to vote or live comfortably seizing an American’s identity.
