Junior indicted for fake ID sales

Last summer, the Belmont Apartments were home to summer school students, Durham residents and, according to federal charges, everything you’d need to make a fake ID.

Junior and former Belmont resident Michael Ruth was indicted in the United States District Court in Greensboro Jan. 31 for allegedly creating and possessing false identification documents. He ran his business, which he said started in February 2004, primarily out of his apartment.

Durham police officers entered an abandoned Belmont apartment leased to Ruth July 19 and found “supplies consistent with the manufacture of counterfeit identification,” according to an affidavit filed by Special Agent Jeffrey Norman of the U.S. Secret Service.

The following day, police visited Ruth in his other apartment at Station Nine on Hillsborough Road. There, Ruth admitted to making fake New York and Texas driver’s licenses. He reportedly estimated that by charging between $80 and $120 for each counterfeit driver’s license, he had made between $12,000 and $13,000.

Before the indictment, investigators also spoke with five other Duke students whose names were found on Ruth’s computer.

The students, who were identified in the affidavit by initials only, told the police about the ins-and-outs of Ruth’s business. One student said he received a counterfeit ID from Ruth for free in exchange for referring “approximately six” other customers.

Several reported that Ruth took their pictures and collected information that they would like on their fake IDs and delivered them about a month later. According to the affidavit, one student reported that “Ruth drove up in his Porsche and threw the IDs, bundled in a rubber band, to me and drove off.”

Earlier this month, federal investigators moved to seize Ruth’s 2000 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet, which they said helped him in “the manufacture and transfer of false identification documents.”