Halloween may be a time for tricks and treats, but for bars, nightclubs, and retailers, it’s also one of the most challenging weekends of the year. Not just because of larger crowds, costumes, and heightened excitement that drives behaviour changes, but because it’s a time when counterfeit IDs come out to play.
Every October, we see a predictable and worrying spike in fake ID activity. Our data, derived from thousands of identity document scans, shows that 6.5% of all IDs scanned over the Halloween period are fraudulent, compared to a yearly average of 5.4%. That might not sound like much at first glance, but across thousands of scans, it represents a significant increase in risk exposure.
Perhaps an even spookier figure is the fact that over 86% of these fake IDs are from out of state, meaning underage individuals are willing to claim a different identity, or a different geography, just to get past the door of a bar or nightclub, or purchase age-restricted goods.
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