CLPEX Chat Board

Not one, but two instances of this in Boston in the past week. Is this a regional fad, or are y'all seeing this elsewhere.

A 38-year-old man mutilated his fingertips, but that didn't stop State Police, with the help of the FBI, from identifying him as a suspected drug trafficker after his arrest in Randolph, State Police said.

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It was the second case in two weeks of a suspect arrested in eastern Massachusetts with mutilated fingertips, a tactic used by criminals to avoid fingerprint identification. Boston police said last week that they had arrested a man named Jorge Falcon Ortiz on drug charges, but they weren't certain who he was because he had deliberately scarred his fingertips so that a fingerprint check could not be done.

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State police say narcotics investigators are more frequently encountering suspects who mutilate their fingerprints, but they have been successful in determining their identity.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaki ... ce_ar.html

and more:

Feds arrest Lynn woman in fingerprint altering scam

By Thor Jourgensen / The Daily Item

LYNN - Federal agents say a Lynn woman, a Dominican doctor and another man altered fingerprints to conceal illegal aliens, charging $4,500 for surgeries conducted in hotel rooms.

Luz Martinez-Lebron, 41, of Lynn, was charged this week by the United States Attorney with conspiracy to conceal and shield illegal aliens from detection along with Jose Elias Zaiter-Pou, 61, a physician with a clinic in the Dominican Republic, and Ricky Dario Baez-Cruz, 29, also a Dominican.

The three made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court Wednesday and are scheduled to return to court Tuesday for detention hearings. If convicted, they each face 10-year maximum sentences followed by three years supervised release time and up to a $250,000 fine.

The trio's arrest is the latest case of fingerprint alteration to surface in local courts. A Lynn man arrested on drug trafficking charges on Jan. 31, 2008 could only be tentatively identified because, according to court documents, his fingerprints had been "burned or chewed off."

In the case of Martinez and her partners, federal agents used a confidential informant to contact the three suspects, principally through Martinez, who is known to people she allegedly assisted in altering fingerprints as "La Rubia."

According to a federal affidavit, Martinez helped Dominicans who were deported from the United States sneak back into the U.S. The deportees paid $4,500 to Martinez to have their fingerprints altered.

Martinez told the informant that Baez-Cruz, her ex-husband, was arrested in Texas while attempting to cross the U.S. border and spent two months in jail and was then released because, according to Martinez, "the authorities could not find anything in his record because nothing matched his fingerprints."

During a June 18 meeting, she told the informant that the alteration method involved cutting away skin from fingers with the operation performed by "a licensed doctor" using anesthesia.

"You don't feel anything," Martinez is quoted in the affidavit as saying. "The doctor will put stitches in and (in) 10 days he will come back and remove the stitches."

The informant asked to meet with the doctor and Lebron said the meeting had to fit into the doctor's travel schedule between the U.S. and Dominican Republic and said only people planning to undergo the surgery could meet with him.

The informant told Martinez to potentially arrange to have the doctor conduct the surgery on three to five people. On June 23, Martinez and the informant spoke again and Martinez said the doctor wanted to schedule the surgery so that he could return to the Dominican Republic to conduct similar surgeries.

On July 7, Martinez, Baez-Cruz and the informant met Zaiter at the Red Roof Inn in Woburn and the informant said the individuals who wanted fingerprints altered were waiting in another hotel room. Zaiter arrived with a surgical bag containing antibiotics, anesthesia, surgical blades and other medical equipment.

Zaiter, according to the affidavit, explained to the informant how "his procedure will create (a) new fingerprint with no traces of your old ones." The informant gave Martinez $4,500. When the informant said he was going to bring the clients into the room federal agents walked in and arrested the trio.

http://www.thedailyitemoflynn.com/artic ... news01.txt