Countywide : List of Minors With Fake Licenses Found

Investigators searching a storage shed in Westminster found a list of about 600 minors in Orange County who apparently paid $60 each for phony driver’s licenses, the Department of Motor Vehicles reported Tuesday.

The shed belongs to John Overholser, 26, who was arrested Monday morning during a search at his apartment, said Tim Landrus, a supervising special investigator for the DMV.

As other evidence in the six-month investigation has shown, most of the minors used their real names. Officials are feeding the new list of names into computers to come up with correct ages and addresses. The list also includes Social Security numbers.

Landrus said investigators might decide to contact the youths, who could be charged with false impersonation. The misdemeanor charge could mean up to a year in prison, or a penalty of $10,000, or both, Landrus said. But the DMV would rather that the minors destroy the phony IDs rather than face prosecution.

“Hopefully, if they (the minors) read that we might arrest them and get them in trouble for holding these fake cards, they’d get rid of them,” Landrus said. “If we can get one kid to stop using it, then we’d have gone a long way to keep kids from getting drunk then driving and possibly killing themselves or others.”

Overholser was one of three men arrested Monday after investigators raided a business and two apartments in Huntington Beach and Orange. The others were Roger Smith, 23, and Ken Walker, 32, roommates who live in Orange.

They and three other people, who were still at large Tuesday, are suspected of making and selling phony identification documents since 1989 from Kitchens To Go, a cabinetry shop in Orange owned by Smith and Walker, Landrus said.

The investigation started in January after a Westminster nightclub reported being flooded with what appeared to be minors passing for 21-year-olds with out-of-state driver’s licenses, he said.

Detectives called the minors and through interviews found out about Kitchens to Go and Overholser, whom they called “Joe the I.D. Man,” Landrus said. They also said people handed out business cards advertising the fake documents service at events such as concerts.

Those advertisement cards were found at Overholser’s apartment Monday along with a stamp kit with state seals from Maryland to Nevada, blank license forms, assorted counterfeit licenses already laminated, three guns, a double-edged dagger, more than a pound of marijuana and a small amount of what appeared to be cocaine.

On Tuesday, detectives with a search warrant also found at the storage shed two boxes full of blank identification cards, several completed ones, six potentially stolen credit cards and $4,000 in stolen travelers’ checks, Landrus said.