Grand Rapids is Beer City USA. Home to numerous colleges and universities and 1 million people in the metro area. And we have a serious fake ID problem.

ID training ranges from passing out a beer-branded book to a short spiel in the middle of hours-long training programs like TIPS or TAM. These methods of introducing someone to the evolving world of forgeries is rooted in old thinking.

If you think a fake ID can’t beat a scanner, you’re stuck in the past. If you think cutting the ID in half or handing them to the police is easy peasy, done deal, case closed, then you’re just being foolish. Society gains more from learning from its mistakes than by emulating perceived success.

And when money is on the line, people start learning from their mistakes a lot faster than you think.

The local college’s Van Wilder or the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy at the DMV aren’t the people creating fakes anymore. While handbags, jerseys and sunglasses still reign supreme, IDs are now part of a billion-dollar fraud industry.

One TAM program stated “as fact” that one website was responsible for most of the fakes in the hands of college kids. One site.

“But they’re all just from China,” you say. Not even close. Homegrown operations, some right in the middle of Toledo, Ohio, are far more prevalent than foreign operations.

Contrary to public opinion, fake ID producers are highly intelligent. If your bar manager, bouncer or alcohol management trainer thinks everything comes from China, then you, as the liquor license holder, have a responsibility to set the record straight.

Because most fakes on the market scan. And are produced domestically.

That’s right. Your $800 scanner is no match for dark-web forgers with physics degrees.

As someone who’s worked in high-crowd capacity venues with liquor licenses since I was 17 years old, I can say bars have sold to minors more in the last five years than in the previous 20. IDs are getting better because the technology is improving. And yet somehow the best methods we have at our disposal are still 10-minute sections of TIPS and TAM.

I developed a presentation that can be regionally and legally amended, depending on the class size. I find it’s best to use confiscated fake IDs to teach others instead of Real ID examples. Everyone in the class already has a real ID on their person, but what they don’t have is a growing collection of hundreds of fake IDs from states all over the country.

Past trainees include members of:

GLC Live at 20 Monroe (20 Monroe Live)
Tin Can Bar (Grand Rapids, Lansing, Kalamazoo)
New Holland Brewing Co (Holland)
New Holland Knickerbocker (Grand Rapids)
New Holland Spirits (South Haven)
New Holland Brewpub (Battle Creek)
Fowling Warehouse Grand Rapids
DLS Events
Anchor Bar
The Intersection