PANAMA CITY BEACH– Every year thousands of spring breakers come to Panama City Beach to party at the clubs and bars, and every year, thousands of fake IDs are taken away. In fact, Club La Vela confiscates more fake IDs than any other nightclub in Florida. Newschannel 7′s Kelly Baumgarten sat down with the La Vela security team earlier today and found out how to tell a real ID from a fake.

Fake IDs are not new. Teens across the country spend big bucks to get their hands on a phony drivers license, but during spring break in Panama City Beach, security crews for clubs seize hundreds every night.

“Every person that comes up the door if we take their ID from them they wanna argue about it and say it’s real and it’s them and then we end up having to get law enforcement involved,” said Paul Winterman, Director of Customer Service at Club La Vela.

These are just some of the fake IDs that Club La Vela has confiscated in the past few weeks. In fact, club employees estimate that in the month of March alone they’ve confiscated more than 2000 fake IDs.

“It’s a big club sometimes you’ve got 4000 people coming through the door and everybody tries to use a fake ID and drink in the club,” said Winterman

Paul Winterman has been working on La Vela’s security team for 16 years and he’s also a former detective. He says there are a lot of ways to spot a fake.

“You can tell by holograms anything that sells seal of authenticity or has a key on it its fake”

Members of La Vela’s security team say if you bend an id and it creases, it’s almost always a fake.

“They get the holograms right, but they don’t get the glue right. The font’s never correct, the color’s always wrong. Kids are paying for them online they’re buying $120 $130 for two of them and we tend to spot them in the first 30 seconds,” said Philip Trivett, head of security at Club La Vela.

But Winterman says identifying a phony id doesn’t come easy to everyone.

“A lot of people will want to work the door, but when it comes down to it there’s a knack to it. Some people got the knack to catch the IDs, some people don’t. So we go through a lot of people training and end up having to put them in other positions other than the door because they’re not capable of doing the job.”

La Vela employees say officers with the Division of Florida Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco are on site 60% of the time during spring break. If the club spots a fake ID, the ABT will fine the person because it’s spring break. Any other time, possession of a fake ID would be a felony,

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