Transit Police Break Up Bus Pass Counterfeit Ring : Crime: Three Los Angeles men are arrested. Group may have sold 1,000 fakes each month, MTA says.

Transit police have broken up a ring of alleged counterfeiters who sold as many as 1,000 bus passes a month, authorities said Tuesday.

Three Los Angeles men--Juan Guzman, 28, Manuel Mendoza, 23, and Juan Zavaleta, 52, were arrested on Monday after Metropolitan Transportation Authority police staked out a legitimate engraver who had been unwittingly working on plates for them.

The engraver thought the plates were for calendars “because the months kept changing,” said MTA spokesman Anthony Greno, adding that the suspects never used the transit agency’s logo when they brought work to the engraver.

Two of the suspects were arrested after they left the engraver’s shop. The third was arrested at a Westlake apartment.

Printing plates, ink, glue and even a hair dryer to dry the ink on counterfeit passes were among the items transit police said they found at the apartment. They also found bogus passes, sketches and engraved plates for copying the new July passes.

MTA officials estimate that they have lost $250,000 in revenues during the last six months that these counterfeiters have been operating.

Legitimate monthly bus passes sell for $42. The bogus ones were going for $20 to $25 on the street, according to MTA Police Sgt. Mark Weissmann.

“On a per-bus basis, we have the most crowded buses in the nation,” said Arthur Leahy, MTA’s executive officer of operations. He estimated that Monday through Friday, 1.3 million people a day ride MTA buses. “Folks who use this system are transit dependent. If we don’t receive the revenues for service, real working-class people are going to get hurt.”

The MTA has gone to great lengths to prevent counterfeiting, officials said. Passes change monthly and are printed in different designs that employ combinations of holograms, diffraction foil and surfaces that change colors in different lights.

“We vary what we use each month just so they can’t get a head start,” said Tom Longsden, MTA’s manager of customer services and sales. “We try to make it as difficult as possible in a short period of time to get an accurate reproduction.”

Officials said even poorly counterfeited cards are often good enough to get on a bus.

“Some are bad, some are OK,” Weissmann said as he examined one of several fake cards displayed at transit police headquarters Tuesday. “But for the most part, you put them in plastic and you’re going to get by our operators in rush hour.”

Using a counterfeit card is a crime. “We usually give people a citation,” Weissmann said. Fines for using fakes can reach $250.