As a Notary, you might run into a fake ID from time to time, but there are not so many of them out there proportionally. Most Notaries don’t bother to take a closer look at ID’s, but perhaps you should inspect each one as if it was fraudulently created.

Always inspect an ID to see:

1. There should be a physical description, expiration date and signature. If these are omitted, the ID is probably fake.

2. Newer ID’s contain raised lettering, embedded images, holographic images and microprinting.

3. A fake ID might have letters blurred together, or print that appears above the lamination.

4. Peeling lamination is a bad sign

5. See if the person’s eyebrows match. Women change their hairstyle and color regularly leaving the eyebrows. mouth and nose as more reliable features for identification.

Questions you could ask

1. You could ask the person their address or zip code.

2. Ask them their sign rather than their DOB. You can memorize a DOB, but nobody memorizes a fake sign. I’m a Leo by the way.

3. You could use an ultraviolet light to see if the perforated image looks authentic compared to a real ID (like yours in your pocket.)

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You might also like:

Notary Public 101 – Identification
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=19507

Notarized document expired identification
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=8294