Suspects arrested in alleged ID scam

CHICAGO, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- The FBI and Chicago police Wednesday began arresting suspects in an alleged massive ID fraud case out of the city's Chinatown neighborhood, U.S. officials say.

The U.S. attorney's office in Chicago said law enforcement planned 17 arrests, including 14 suspects in the Chicago area and one each in Maryland, Michigan and Missouri. Most of the suspects are charged with conspiring to possess illegally obtained Social Security numbers.

U.S. officials said Jun Yun Zhang was the alleged leader of a crime ring that sold fraudulent identification for at least five years, operating out of Chinatown on Chicago's near South Side.

Zhang and others allegedly sold fraudulent "identity sets" for $1,200 to $3,500 each to primarily Chinese, Korean and Indonesian nationals smuggled into the United States, or otherwise in the country illegally, officials said.

Between 2003 and 2008, thousands of Illinois driver's licenses and ID cards were issued to people using Social Security account numbers with the 586 prefix. The prefix is assigned to individuals in American Samoa, Guam, the Philippines and Saipan.

U.S. officials said between 1970 and 2002, Illinois issued hundreds of driver's licenses and ID cards to people using the 586 Social Security prefix.

The startling increase was due in part "to the illegal document mill allegedly operated by Zhang and 18 others, including two former (state Secretary of State) workers," a U.S. attorney's office statement said. The two former state employees charged are Timothy T. Johnson, Jr., 30, of Justice, and James M. Howell, 49, of Chicago, both of whom worked at the SOS facility in Bridgeview.

Zhang and several family members were among those arrested Wednesday.