Federal and local authorities on Thursday arrested 21 people and searched 17 homes and businesses in connection with a group that allegedly sold machines to manufacture fraudulent government cards.
Alejandro Morales-Serrano, 45, of Los Angeles, is accused of being the ringleader of a group based primarily near MacArthur Park that sold document-making machines to groups in Northern California; Houston; Aurora, a suburb of Chicago, and elsewhere across the country, according to a federal indictment.
Seven others have been indicted in the case but have not been named as they are still at large, said the Los Angeles office of the FBI.
Agents also seized plastic-lamination machines, computers and fraudulent documents.
The machines were allegedly sold to people who would make phony driver's licenses -– from Mexico and 40 U.S. states -– Social Security cards, work visas and immigration documents, both U.S. and Mexican, Eimiller said.
This scheme produced thousands of documents and supported additional criminal activity, including tax fraud, bank fraud, identity theft and pharmaceutical diversion schemes.
Authorities said they are unsure how long the alleged network had been operating, but Morales-Serrano was heard over a wiretap describing that he's been doing this for over a decade.
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