Spiro Pavlovich had already proved himself to be a skilled forger and impostor, fooling Harvard’s law and business-school admissions offices three times on behalf of himself and his wife and partner in crime, Monnette Caulffield. But in 1980 he upped his game, using the fake letterhead of a Kenner, Louisiana, oil company to order a $1,500 Polaroid ID-4 system, a bulky, gray piece of equipment that included a camera, a laminator, and a die-cutter.
Spiro wrote himself notes on how to use it (“Place this side up into optical reader”), and he and Monnette set to work making dozens of fake IDs. Monnette, who had once wanted to be a doctor, now had an official-looking badge identifying her as chief resident in the psychiatry department at West Jefferson General Hospital, outside New Orleans. She used her real name, as she did for an IBM badge.
