State troopers caught a 23-year-old man with a fake ID card and someone else’s debit card as a result of an Interstate 30 east traffic stop Sunday morning, according to arrest reports.
Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Arturo Ugalde stopped a Honda Civic at 8:11 a.m. Aug. 8, 2021, on Interstate 30 east at mile marker 121 for speeding and no seat belt. During a roadside interview, Ugalde observed indicators of deception and nervousness, and received conflicting stories from the driver and other occupants of the car. The driver reportedly presented a US resident card as ID.
In the front seat where the man had been sitting Ugalde reported finding a debit card with a bank logo on it. No occupant was identified as the cardholder. The driver claimed the card belonged to a friend who owned the car, and must have left it inside. The vehicle owner, identified as the back seat passenger, denied any knowledge of the cardholder, and said it must belong to one of the driver’s friends. A call to the debit cardholder’s issuer’s fraud department, however, revealed the card had been reported stolen on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. The driver, however, insisted it was his friend’s card and that he could call him. When the man attempted to contact the cardholder via Facebook messenger, the other party did not pick up even though he was shown on the media app as active.
The car was released to the back seat passenger identified as the owner, and the man who had been driving was taken into custody and transported to jail for further investigation.
Ugalde noted the residency card the man had presented appeared to be the wrong shade and the picture on it was not in the correct format. The highway patrol trooper contacted the US Customs office in Dallas, where an agent verified the card was not assigned to a person by that name nor did the person by that name have any legal status. The man admitted he had bought the card from a guy in Virginia about a year ago.
The man, identified in arrest reports as a 23-year-old El Salvador resident named Jose Antonio Canisales-Martinez who listed a Virginia address as his place of residence, received warnings for the traffic violations but was booked into Hopkins County jail at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 8, 2021, on fraudulent use or possession of identifying information and tampering with a government record for the ID and bank cards found during the traffic stop, according to arrest reports. The 23-year-old remained in Hopkins County jail Tuesday morning, Aug. 10, 2021, in lieu of $20,000 on the fraud charge and $2,000 on the tampering charge.
