Woman who ran massive fake ID mill out of Marion gets 4.5 years in prison

MARION — A Mexican national who ran a document mill out of Marion has been sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison for forging hundreds of identification documents.

Federal prosecutors have alleged that Martha Buendia-Chavarria, 44, falsified over 1,000 documents between July 2016 and October 2017 from her home in Marion, operating "one of the largest false document mills uncovered in this region of the country," according to a memorandum filed with the court last week.

In June, Buendia-Chavarria entered a guilty plea to all four charges filed against her in a December indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Court papers allege she would meet middlemen at either the Papa John's or Domino's pizza places near her home in Marion to give them the fake driver's licenses, ID cards, social security cards and green cards that they would then deliver to customers.

Her case was the beginning of a larger probe that resulted in the arrests of dozens of agricultural workers in Erie County.

Mike Tobin, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio, confirmed to the Toledo Blade that federal agents traced counterfeit documents produced by Buendia-Chavarria to Corso's Flower and Garden Centers, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted raids in June, arresting more than 100 workers.

According to the memorandum filed last week, Buendia-Chavarria kept handwritten ledgers of the identities she had sold and in some cases, to whom the identities were sold and who the middlemen were.

In addition, investigators were able to identify people who had purchased false identity documents through text messages between Buendia-Chavarria and the middlemen, found during searches of their phones, according to the memorandum.

Illegal Alien Sold Thousands Of Fraudulent IDs Out Of Ohio ‘Document Mill’