A crafty illegal alien lived in the United States for nearly 20 years by stealing a Bronx murder victim’s identity and using it get a driver’s license, a passport and a Social Security card – and even to pay taxes, police said yesterday.
The impostor, Luis Alberto Garcia-Perez, 44, was even busted three times – for relatively minor crimes – under the name of Ismael Comacho, who was rubbed out in a Bronx triple homicide in 1983, cops said.
But each time he was sprung with cops none the wiser.
Garcia-Perez used the passport to travel to and from his native Dominican Republic dozens of times, police said.
The criminal also used his new identity to get Medicaid and a voter-registration card, cops said.
And he even convinced his wife and stepson he was Comacho.
But the scheme unraveled after a three-month probe by Sgt. William Planeta and Detective Miguel Marte of the NYPD’s document-frauds squad.
They began their probe after New Jersey cops asked for a photo of Comacho in a separate investigation – and found two different pictures.
Garcia-Perez, busted Wednesday in Paterson, N.J., on passport fraud and identity-theft charges, at first insisted he was Comacho. But he ‘fessed up when shown proof Comacho was dead.
He faces at least 10 years in prison and deportation.
Police believe he stole Comacho’s identity in 1988 after examining tombstones in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in Throgs Neck, where Comacho is buried.
“It’s scary to know that someone impersonated someone in my family for so long,” said Comacho’s sister. “I heard about identity theft on TV, but I never thought it would hit so close to home.”