Offenders try to defeat fingerprint identification measures in an attempt to hide criminal records, including related deportations. They employ a variety of techniques in their efforts to thwart law enforcement. However, no matter what method they use, their motivation is the same. FBI fingerprint examiners have encountered situations where criminals, including those in the country illegally, intentionally altered their fingertips themselves or with the assistance of medical professionals.
They falsely believed that doing so would prevent law enforcement officials from discovering their true identities. A review of those records for patterns and trends revealed that Massachusetts officials had the most encounters with individuals who had altered fingerprints, followed by New York, Texas, California, and Arizona.
A substantial number of individuals who altered their prints were arrested for drug-related offenses, followed in measure by immigration-related offenses, theft, and violent crimes. Nearly all of the individuals with intentionally altered prints had extensive criminal records and various law enforcement encounters.
Many were deported criminals who altered their fingerprints in an attempt to reenter the United States. The CJIS Division categorized the alteration types based upon the suspected method used to mutilate the fingerprint. The alterations most frequently encountered were the vertical cut or slice, followed by the z-pattern cut, intentional burns, and unknown or uncategorized.
The vertical cut or slice modifies the fingerprint by scarring or distorting. Another actually had the core cut out of all ten of his fingertips, then they pulled the skin together and stitched it," said Detective Lieutenant Kenneth Martin, head of the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab division that oversees fingerprint analysis.
Once a fingerprint sample is taken, a computer can spit out the results in less than five minutes. And when law enforcement gets wind of an altered print they pay close attention. Now imagine purposely doing that on all ten of your fingers. Imagine the pain. If someone were to go to those lengths, that's someone we want to know," said Martin.
Massachusetts State Police have a record of at least 20 individuals last year alone who were arrested with deliberately scarred fingertips. Just last week, a doctor was charged in federal court because he allegedly planned to surgically alter the fingerprints of illegal immigrants for a hefty fee. In Europe, law enforcement officials have also reported an uptick in migrant workers discovered with altered fingertips — apparently in an effort to avoid detection by immigration officials.
Although there are no national figures, fingerprint experts say they have detected a rise in the number of incidents. Wertheim said that the ways criminals alter their fingerprints ranges from the low tech — rubbing the skin, burning fingertips on a stove, dousing fingers in acid, and self-mutilation using razors — to high tech surgery.
Wertheim fears the next step could well involve dermal lasers commonly used for plastic surgery. Fingerprints start developing at about the fourth month in utero and traditionally remain unchanged until sometime after death when decomposition takes over. That's why they are such an important tool for law enforcement. Shortly after someone is booked for a crime, police officers take an inked impression of each fingertip, and run the prints through a database to check for prior arrests and convictions.
The computer checks for two different and distinctive features — whorls and ridging — and can generate a result in less than five minutes. Criminals altering their fingerprints is not new, but their methods have changed. In the 's, the infamous bank robber John Dillinger poured acid into cuts in his fingertips in an attempt to erase them. He was eventually shot and killed by Chicacgo Police in
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