Two Madera County men have been sentenced to five years in state prison for masterminding and running a massive counterfeit operation in the Fresno area that created and manufactured phony California Driver Licenses and other forged government documents that they sold to illegal immigrants in the area. The pair was arrested early last summer after a two-month undercover sting operation by California Department of Motor Vehicles investigators and other local law enforcement officers.

"The security of our customer's documents and identification is one of our most important goals," said DMV Director George Valverde. "We simply will not tolerate attempts to dilute the integrity of those documents and processes."

Pascual Cruz Luciano, 24, was sentenced Tuesday to five years in state prison and fined $10,000, following a two-day trial. He was found guilty of three counts of counterfeiting government documents to cover legal presence. Luciano's brother, Perfecto Cruz Luciano, 30, was sentenced to five years on Feb. 5, 2008, after agreeing to plead guilty to felony counts of counterfeiting documents as well as creating and distributing those documents.

The Lucianos were taken in to custody on June 21, 2007, at their small Madera studio apartment. At that time, Tom Wilson, the DMV Supervising Investigator in Fresno confirmed it was one of the largest document mills ever seen in the Central Valley area, and said that officers confiscated numerous forged California License and Identification cards, computers, printers, laminators, fraudulent California State Seals, more than 10,000 pieces of card stock, 5000 laminate sleeves and more than another 100 pre-printed laminate sheets that could have been used to create over a thousand copies of the federally-issued "resident Alien" cards.