Fake Green Card Ring Was Largest in U.S. : Crime: Thirty investigations zeroed in on L.A. print shop as base of counterfeiting operation. So far, nine people have been arrested.

Government agents thought they were onto something recently when their 30 separate investigations into counterfeiting and other illegal activities all began pointing to one group of people and a Pico Boulevard print shop.

Now, after a series of raids this week, federal and state authorities say their hunches were right: Working under the code name Operation Stagefright, agents seized the shop’s two printing presses, arrested nine people and issued arrest warrants for five others described as major co-conspirators in a complex counterfeiting ring.

In the process, authorities allege, they have dismantled the nation’s largest-ever criminal operation supplying counterfeit work permits for immigrants, known as green cards, as well as birth certificates, Social Security cards, car registration slips and even $20 bills.

In more than a dozen raids at the BZB Printing shop and at suspects’ homes, agents seized 250,000 documents worth an estimated $8 million, three handguns and $5,000 in counterfeit cash, according to U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials. They believe that the ring was operating in major cities from coast to coast and as far away as India and Pakistan, providing fake identities for as many as 1 million people.

“One can only guess how many people are out there within the tentacles of this operation,” said INS District Director Robert M. Moschorak. “We’ve got a quarter of a million documents that these people just happened to have on hand, and they have been in operation for years.”

Moschorak said agents are continuing their search this weekend for an unidentified number of additional suspects in Los Angeles and other cities.

The counterfeit ring had four tiers: the Pico Boulevard headquarters of the operation, which printed the blanks; distributors who sold the blanks; “mills” throughout the country that filled out the fake documents and provided photographs, and street dealers who sold the final documents, authorities said.

The arrests will help the federal government crack down on the continuing wave of undocumented and illegal immigrants flowing into the country and finding work, said John Brechtel, assistant district director for the INS.

Since 1986, employers have been forbidden by federal law to hire anyone without proof of legal residency. Buying the documents for as little as $40 locally and as much as $500 apiece in other cities, immigrants have been able to illegally obtain jobs and avoid detection and deportation by INS agents, Brechtel said.

“With one $40 document, you’ve beaten employer sanctions,” Brechtel said. “You can literally change your identity on a moment’s notice.”

The fake documents also have been used in a variety of organized criminal activities, he said. Car thieves have been selling stolen cars using fake state Department of Motor Vehicle registration documents, and other groups have been looting mailboxes and robbing mail trucks to get senior citizens’ monthly Social Security checks, and using fake identification cards to cash them.

Among the seven people arrested by the INS were Hyun Bae Suh, 36, who authorities say ran the print shop at 3518 W. Pico Blvd.; and Antonio Santiago-Lopez, 35, and MacLovio Ramirez Cruz, 27, whom INS officials identified as the ringleaders.

Two other suspects were arrested by state agents for trafficking in bogus Department of Motor Vehicles documents, authorities said.

The seven arrested by the INS were charged with conspiracy and sale, manufacturing and possession of false identification documents. Suh was released on bond, but the other six--believed to be undocumented Mexican nationals--were being held pending further investigation, authorities said.

Calls and visits to BZB were unanswered; authorities said the suspects did not yet have lawyers.

On Friday, the tiny print shop was closed, and the raid and arrests were the main topic of discussion among neighboring merchants along the dingy stretch of storefront shops. Some said they had figured something suspicious was going on there.

“When you got a business, people are supposed to come in the front door,” said merchant Lidia Lopez. “I never see people there.”

INS agents said the arrests were the culmination of more than two years of work, and dozens of investigations into counterfeiting that had been consolidated in recent months. The suspects and the print shop were identified after the agency’s forensic lab in Virginia confirmed that documents seized in cities throughout the United States were coming from the same source, Moschorak said.

The probe was expanded earlier this year when the DMV, the Secret Service, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department joined in. All matters involving counterfeit cash have been turned over to the Secret Service, which investigates forged currency.