Vocabulary notes

to endorse the check	подписать чек
a payroll check	чек на получение зарплаты
a sheaf	пачка
to bounce	быть возвращенным банком реминенту
alias	вымышленное имя
foray	налет, набег
to jeopardize	подвергать опасности

Task 3. Read the text again and make sure you know all underlined parts of the text. Give their Russian equivalents

Task 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the message of this text?

2. Why was it possible for Patty to cash worthless checks?

3. How did Patty and her boy friend spend the money?

4. What happened to them in the end?

5. What was the purpose of an 80-member federal panel and who were its members?

6. How much money is lost yearly due to false I.D.?

Task 5. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Agreement or disagreement should be followed by some comment

1. The assistant manager of the Los Angeles supermarket refused to cash the check.

2. Patty Bledsoe had proper "I.D." — credit cards, driver's license, and Social Security card for three names.

3. Patty cashed checks totaling $17,000 on this one weekend.

4. Patty and her boy friend Robert Hinckley went to Mexico to spend a honeymoon there.

5. They smuggled heroine into the USA.

6. Investigators found with them no evidence at all.

7. There are quite a few forgers in the country.

8. Forging documents is a fairly harmless crime.

Task 6. Ask the questions to which the following statements are the answers:

1. The check was in the name of "Cynthia L. Thomas".

2. Her name was Patty Bledsoe.

3. Her wallet bulged with credit cards.

4. The driver's license bore her signature, color photo and thumb-print.

5. Checks were all in the amount of $242.

6. They bought three kilos of cocaine in Colombia.

7. It was an apparent murder-suicide.

8. They had kept records of which aliases had been used when and where; what credit cards had been "burnt out" and which ones could be used for the next foray.

Task 7. Explain in English what the words and word combinations mean. Use them in your own sentences

Identification, a paper person, a counterfeit document, to cash a check, worthless, hard-drugs, a smug­gler, apparent, murder-suicide, alias, "burnt out" credit cards, to beat the path of crime, law-enforcement officials

.

Task 8. Practice the speech patterns given below. Make up two sentences of your own on each pattern

1. She opened her wallet, bulging with credit cards, and handed him a Cali­fornia driver's license bearing her signature, color photo and thumb-print. The official handing over a certified copy of the certificate generally has no idea whether that person is living or dead.

2. The checks began bouncing Monday morning. He began serving his sentence in a maximum security prison last month.

3. Federal panel, composed of government experts, law-enforcement officials and representatives of the business community, privacy groups and the public, has been studying ways to combat the problem with­out jeopardizing individual privacy. Yet it went on to dismiss my sentencing proposals without even analyzing them

4. Patty Bledsoe and Robert Hinckley left only one small footprint on the path of crime beaten across America by tens of thousands of "paper peo­ple. The judge disposes of dozens of cases evry month. Tens of thousands of birth certificates are issued annually by officials.

Using fraudulent U.S. passports, they re-entered the United States and sold the cocaine for more than $30,000. Reaching out from behind their screen of assumed identities, the paper people make all of us their victims. By the time the seller discovered that the check was worthless, the buyer, again using fraudulently ob­tained documents, had sold the car to a legitimate dealer and moved on to the next victim.

Task 9. Make the summary of the text. Use the key words and word combinations

Text 2

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. What are the basic documents in our life?

2. Who are the victims of paper people’s crimes?

3. Are fraudulent checks easy to recognize and why?

Task 2. Read the text to get the main idea paying special attention to the underlined parts of the text (key words and word combinations)

At the heart of the problem lies one of the most basic documents in American life: the birth certificate. You can obtain a copy of your own — or someone else's usually by merely paying a small fee and an­swering a few questions. More than ten million birth-certificate copies are obtained from vital-records offi­ces across the nation each year — 80 percent of them by mail. With this "official" document the criminal can "breed" other documents — a Social Security card or driver's license, and then in turn open bank accounts, ob­tain credit cards, collect unemploy­ment or welfare benefits.

Criminals most often seek to ob­tain the birth certificate of a person who died in infancy. The official handing over a certified copy of the certificate generally has no idea whether that person is living or dead, nor any quick means of find­ing out. Thus, the criminal with an "infant death" birth certificate may create a paper person whose ex­istence will never be challenged.

Reaching out from behind their screen of assumed identities, the pa­per people make all of us their vic­tims. From illegal aliens, who take millions of jobs, to drug smugglers and welfare chiselers, they lay an only vaguely realized financial bur­den on every citizen. Some of the ways paper people exact their toll:

Tapping public funds. In Camden, N.J., a 26-year-old "mother" applied for welfare for her five chil­dren. She presented the birth cer­tificates for all five. A tip caused authorities to investigate further. The woman had no children, but she had several identities, and Social Security cards and New Jersey driver's licenses to back them up. "She could have got about $600 a month for nothing," said one detective on the case.

In Chicago, authorities nabbed a "welfare queen" who used 250 ali­ases in 16 states to milk huge amounts of money — more than $130,000 in Illinois alone in one year — from a variety of social-welfare programs. Authorities charge that while representing herself as an un­employed mother or widow, the woman used at least 31 different ad­dresses, three Social Security num­bers, records of eight "deceased" husbands, and documents for some 24 children. She owns at least four cars, including two Cadillacs. At her preliminary hearing, her own attorney proved to be unsure of her real name.

"Legitimizing” fraudulent checks. In California, a group of con men scanned want-ads for expensive cars being sold by private owners. Well-dressed and backed with fraudu­lently obtained I.D-s, they met the owners at their homes, dickered over price and agreed to buy. They always worked it out so that the transaction took place after banking hours. They would present a phony cashier's check for the car and drive off. By the time the seller discovered that the check was worthless, the buyer, again using fraudulently ob­tained documents, had sold the car to a legitimate dealer and moved on to the next victim.