Atherton's cyber cop helps bust fake ID ring in town Atherton's cyber cop helps bust fake ID ring in town (June 12, 2002)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

In just six months on the county's high-tech crime task force, Atherton police officer Jeff Hunter helped investigate 40 identity theft cases, worked on an FBI sting targeting a counterfeit Microsoft software ring, and helped shut down an operation run by two local teens making sophisticated fake IDs on their home computers.

"Hopefully, it's keeping kids from drinking and driving," says Officer Hunter, 29, referring to the fake-ID bust.

As the Atherton Police Department's in-house computer guru, he was a natural choice for assignment to the task force -- known as the San Mateo County Rapid Enforcement Allied computer team (REACT).

The town's police department is reaping benefits of Officer Hunter's work, says Chief Bob Brennan.

The fake ID scheme involved two Menlo School students, a 16-year-old from Atherton and a 15-year-old from Menlo Park. They were arrested in March on charges of making and selling to teenagers around 200 fake California driver's licenses. An investigation of their computers revealed a detailed list of students up and down the Peninsula who bought the IDs, enabling police to retrieve them.

As a member of the task force, Mr. Hunter has taken 280 hours of courses in everything from white-collar crime to online child exploitation. He's learned techniques for tracking down the original sender of an e-mail whose identity has been hidden, and how to conduct a forensic examination of a computer and retrieve deleted information, he says.

Because the Atherton City Council was leery of losing the services of a full-time officer during the two-year assignment, Mr. Hunter spends half his week working with the Redwood City-based task force, and the other half on patrol in Atherton.

His ease with computers may make his career in law enforcement seem like an odd choice, especially back in 1998, when he was hired by the Atherton Police Department.

"I've got a few friends who were saying that I should have gone to work at a dot-com, and I have some friends now who are saying, 'Thank God you didn't,'" Mr. Hunter says.

"I love law enforcement," he says.

E-mail Andrea Gemmet at agemmet@almanacnews.com.