Love it or hate it, underage drinking is an established culture in parts of South Louisiana.
Sure, some older siblings, relatives and 21-year-old friends are always ready to have an underage drinking buddy, but sometimes that’s not enough  — there are just too many parties between teenage years and 21 to pass on the convenience of being able to buy alcohol yourself. So, for some, counterfeit identification seems more practical and sometimes safer.

Putting in the Effort
Following the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, Louisiana teens still managed to get their booze on through a legal loophole that allowed anyone 18 or older to buy alcohol. And following a 1996 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that officially raised the age to 21, young drinkers have snaked around the current laws to uphold a longstanding tradition.
Mechanical engineering freshman, Erik Wientjes bought his first fake ID at 17 years old, and it’s served him well through college. Like many gunning for professionally crafted counterfeit IDs, he ordered his off the Internet. He filled out a sheet with his personal identification information, snapped a photo with a professional-grade camera and signed his signature to send in to the now defunct IDBuddy.com, along with $70. The Tennessee identity he received hasn’t let him down since.
“It’s easier to get alcohol [with a fake ID] than trying to ask some guy at a gas station to buy it for you,” Wientjes said. “I feel like that’s more illegal than trying to buy it yourself with a 
fake ID.”
A bouncer seized his ID at Tiger-
land once, but it was sold back to him by the end of the night.
Professionally crafted IDs like Wientjes’ are made with machines that produce cards indistinguishable from real IDs. That is, they’re made from the same material as a legal ID, scan through card readers and light up in black light.
Mechanical engineering freshman Walter Johnson explained how it’s a more practical investment than making your own. He and his friends made basic IDs with Photoshop.
“We put it on a sticker and then pasted it to IDs we had from high school,” he said. “It was enough for visual proof, and it was good, but it didn’t have scanning capabilities. It didn’t have black light capabilities.”
The only problem with his Internet ID came when doormen didn’t believe his age.
“I don’t think it’s that it looks fake. It’s more that you don’t look the age you say you are,” Johnson said.
Like Wientjes, Johnson thinks it’s a matter of practicality for someone underage to buy a fake if he or she plans on buying alcohol regularly; it’s a way to buy alcohol for yourself, but also a way to get into bars, or visit 21 and older music venues for concerts.
With sites like ID Buddy offering to cut prices for larger orders, it’s also more appealing for a wider range of people to jump on the opportunity. Wientjes ordered his with 20 others to knock the price down to $70 a person.
For others, it’s just easier to pick up the old ID of a lookalike friend. Human resources and education senior Chelsea Black ended up with one of these hand-me-downs at Mardi Gras in New Orleans two years ago. She was hanging out with older friends, one of whom offered Chelsea her expired ID.
“After that she just let me keep it,” she said. “Since then I’ve used it a ton. We’re both white girls with brown hair, and I feel like that’s as far as they [anyone checking can] go.”
Besides, people who are perfectly legal can get hassled just as much, 
she said.
“I feel like it’s not fair to judge someone based on what they looked like at 16. A lot of people I’ve seen, their actual IDs look less like them than my fake one did, so it works,” she said.
She did run into an issue with the expiration date, but she got by.
“I can totally tell this is you, it isn’t fake, but it’s expired,” she recalled a bouncer saying. “I just meandered my way in.”
 

The Other Cost
Technically, presenting a fraud-
ulent identification in Louisiana is punishable with up to a $200 fine, up to 30 hours of community service and a possible 90-day suspension of your driver’s license.
Most bouncers around Baton Rouge simply take fake IDs they catch or tell the owner to scram. However, it’s not impossible to get charged for having one.
One student, who wished to remain anonymous, fled from local police when they pulled him over for a traffic violation and booked him for an MIP, fleeing the police, and manufacturing and intent to distribute fake documentation.
“I spent 20 hours in jail,” he said. “I’ve seen people get charged with possession of a fake, but I’ve never seen someone get charged with the felony I got charged with.”
Like the previous students, the student bought his ID off of a website along with a group of people to cut the price down. It served him well from high school through his freshman year of college — until his arrest.
“They assumed that I had manufactured it myself,” he said. “I didn’t even realize what [the charge] was. I talked to a lawyer and he asked me to repeat what it was because he had never heard of it.”
Like Weintjes, the student joined a large group of people in ordering IDs from a China-based website, ID Chief, and touted the popularity of the site.
“It was a lucrative enterprise. Everyone had them,” he said.
It was popular enough to catch the eye of four U.S. senators in 2012 and urge them to contact the Chinese Federal Police and push them to take action. The website shut down in a matter of months.
Following the bust in August 2012, Brian Zimmer of the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License told a DC news station that this website was making between $20 to $40 million.
“This is a big, big business,” he reiterated.
ID Buddy quickly filled the space that ID Chief left behind, but Weintjes hypothesizes it’s the same individuals running the companies. Other similar websites exist to meet the demands of minors in the U.S. as well.
Authorities chasing a few of the many manufacturers leave less room for liability on the receiving end. And if the fakes get caught in customs, the companies he’s familiar with just resend another package.
“I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for ordering a fake ID,” Weintjes said. “It’s definitely worth the investment, I guess.”