"To avoid ID, more are mutilating fingerprints; Police say scarring can thwart detection" by David Abel, Globe Staff | July 21, 2010
So desperate was one man to conceal his identity that he began biting his fingers and drawing blood while being booked.
Some have used eyedroppers filled with acid or pressed their fingers onto burning metal to blot their fingerprints. Others have spent thousands of dollars to hire shady doctors to surgically alter their fingertips, hoping to scar them beyond recognition.
The numbers are still relatively small, but in the past decade, State Police detectives say they have seen a sevenfold spike in people arrested with mutilated fingertips, a disturbing trend they said reflects dire efforts to evade the harsher punishments that come with multiple arrests, to avoid deportation, or to fool the increasingly sophisticated computers that do most fingerprint checks....
Big enough for a front-page filler, 'er, feature.
In the last month, federal and local officers in the area have made multiple arrests in three separate cases involving people who sought to hide their identity by trying to erase their fingerprints.
While authorities have had some recent successes in identifying those with mutilated fingerprints, most have not been identified. Indeed, of the recorded arrests this decade in Massachusetts, only 17 percent were positively identified by matching their scuffed fingerprints with previously recorded prints.
Moreover, detectives suspect they are missing many others who may have been recorded as new fingerprints by the state’s computer system, which receives on average about 700 fingerprint cards a day from some 360 law enforcement agencies around the state.
The 24-year-old State Police computer system, which determines whether a print matches one on record or is a new, unrecorded print, sends only 25 percent of all fingerprints to department analysts for review.
“Unfortunately, mutilation can work to evade our system,’’ said Detective Lieutenant Deborah Rebeiro, commanding officer of the State Police unit that oversees the state fingerprint database, which has about a million records on file and can tap into national and other state fingerprint databases with nearly 100 million records....
I'm sure I am in there somewhere. Drunk driving, you know.
Rebeiro and others noted that fingerprint mutilation is part of a long history of criminals trying to conceal their identity, which has included everything from assuming the names of dead people to undergoing extensive plastic surgery. Among the most notorious cases of a criminal destroying his fingerprints was John Dillinger, the bank robber who had been on the lam for years in the 1930s and used acid to burn his fingertips.
But fingerprint scans have become more sophisticated over the years, and police now require those arrested to dab all their fingers in ink or have them scanned digitally, including a nail-to-nail roll that takes in far more of the loops, whorls, and arches than just capturing an impression of the fingertip.
Officials at the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they do not keep national records of the number of suspects found to have deliberately disfigured their fingerprints.
“It’s not something we really track, but I have heard fingerprint examiners mention a slight increase of people trying to mutilate their fingerprints, enough for them to take notice,’’ said Steven Fischer, a spokesman for the FBI’s division of Criminal Justice Information Services....
I oppose the New World Order, but I think I'll pass on the self-mutilation.
I don't even have a tattoo.
Last month, such residual data taken from previous bookings helped local authorities identify Leonel Lopez-Ortiz, an alleged drug dealer from Randolph, and Jorge Falcon Ortiz, who was arrested in Boston, also on drug trafficking charges. Police said both had sought to frustrate efforts to identify them by mutilating their fingers.
Last week, prosecutors charged three people in a federal court in Massachusetts with plotting to help illegal immigrants avoid detection by trying to alter their fingerprints. Among those arrested was Jose Elias Zaiter-Pou, a doctor who flew from the Dominican Republic and allegedly planned to surgically remove the fingerprints of illegal immigrants for a $4,500 fee....
“The people who do this are pretty desperate,’’ Detective Lieutenant Kenneth Martin, commanding officer of the State Police division that oversees fingerprint analysis of crime scenes, said. “I can’t imagine the pain it must take. You have to get deep down, in the nerve endings. I see these people, to go to this extreme, as a real danger to society.’’
And to themselves.
FLASHBACK:
"2d suspect arrested with mutilated fingertips" by David Abel, Globe Staff | July 2, 2010
A 38-year-old alleged drug dealer was arrested this week on charges he mutilated his fingertips to hide his identity — the second time in two weeks that a suspect was arrested with altered hands, police said.
Isn't that a bit drastic?
Leonel Lopez-Ortiz was charged with identity fraud and having a falsely procured driver’s license after being arrested at a home in Randolph on Wednesday during a narcotics investigation. He allegedly gave investigators fake names and a false driver’s license.
A search of his car revealed a stash of $159,000 in cash in a shopping bag, while a search of the home found an additional $7,000 in cash, an alleged drug ledger, and material used to dilute narcotics, State Police said.
Lopez-Ortiz’s arraignment in Quincy District Court was delayed yesterday because of the trouble establishing his identity. In the end, the arraignment was put off to this morning after the court could not procure a Spanish translator.
Illegal?
State Police investigators, with the help of the FBI, established Lopez-Ortiz’s identity after several hours of examining his fingerprints. They determined he was the same man wanted on cocaine trafficking warrants out of Suffolk Superior Court and Roxbury District Court and a cocaine distribution warrant out of Dorchester District Court.
An attorney representing Lopez-Ortiz did not return calls.
Last week, Boston police arrested Jorge Falcon Ortiz on drug charges, but they weren’t certain of his identity. He had also deliberately scarred his fingertips....
I guess it's all the rage now.
Maybe we should chop 'em off like the Saudis.
"Three charged in illegal immigrant case
Three people are facing charges in connection with an alleged plot to help illegal immigrants avoid detection by mutilating their fingerprints, the US attorney’s office said. Ricky Dario Baez-Cruz, 29, and Jose Elias Zaiter-Pou, 61, both of the Dominican Republic, and Luz Martinez-Lebron, 41, of Lynn have been charged with conspiracy to conceal and shield illegal immigrants from detection, the office of US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz said.
I suppose they are lucky another piece of the human anatomy isn't used for identification.
All three pleaded not guilty yesterday in federal court in Boston, a spokeswoman for Ortiz said, and they have a detention hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Authorities allege that Zaiter-Pou, a physician in Santo Domingo, traveled to the United States to surgically remove the fingerprints of illegal immigrants for a $4,500 fee. The defendants face a sentence of up to 10 years imprisonment if convicted.
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