Arrest woman as longtime maker/seller of fake IDs

Thursday, March 12, 2009
By CHARLES HACK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

A Jersey City woman who works for a large pharmaceutical company had a side business - selling fake identification cards out of her home, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.

The Prosecutor's Office Special Investigations Unit announced its arrest early Wednesday morning of Eunice Rivers-Lloyd, 43, on charges of counterfeiting government documents, a second-degree crime, and forgery, a third-degree crime.

Bail was set by Superior Court Judge Kevin Callahan at $150,000 cash or bond.

DeFazio said Rivers-Lloyd, who also went by Eunice Lloyd, provided one-stop shopping for all sorts of phony identification - and had been in business for a "significant period of time."

"This had dangerous ramifications because fraudulent IDs can be used for many nefarious purposes," DeFazio said.

Detectives arrested Rivers-Lloyd, an employee of Hoffman-LaRoche in Nutley, as she was leaving her home at 8 a.m.

They seized hundreds of items related to the operation, including photographs and counterfeit ID cards and other fake documents in various stages of production, authorities said. Also seized were computers, printers, and a lamination machine authorities say she used to produce the documents.

Among the phony IDs she produced were driver's licenses, corporate ID cards, checks, birth certificates, and various employment and financial documents, authorities said.

The investigation is continuing, DeFazio said, noting that information on the woman's computer's hard drive could lead to additional arrests.

DeFazio said customers would provide Rivers-Lloyd with the names and biographical information to appear on the counterfeit document, and she did the rest.

"She was producing these counterfeit documents from start to finish," DeFazio said.

A separate probe into someone using a counterfeit Hudson County identification card led detectives to Rivers-Lloyd as the source of the fake document in an investigation that began in December, officials said.