CHICAGO – Sheriff’s office investigators found a fake ID operation while inspecting the home of an Albany Park man on electronic monitoring for two major narcotics cases, prosecutors said.
Keith Funches, 29, has been on electronic monitoring since 2020 when prosecutors accused him of possessing 4.78 pounds of ecstasy with a street value of over $200,000. Officials subsequently charged him with possessing another 1,811 ecstasy pills worth about $64,000.
The purported fake ID operation was discovered last week when investigators from the sheriff’s electronic monitoring office went to Funches’ home in the 4900 block of North Albany for a “compliance check.”
While searching the home, the investigators found an ID-making machine, printers, a scanner, and blank identification cards in an office, Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Dale-Schmidt said during a bond court hearing Tuesday.
Also in the office, she said, were 15 California driver’s licenses with an invalid ID number and another man’s face and name. Three more California licenses featured a valid ID number that did not match the name, face, and date of birth shown on the cards. According to Dale-Schmidt, investigators also recovered two invalid Florida licenses and an invalid Wisconsin ID.
Officials said Funches was the only person in the home, and there were no indications that anyone else lived there. But his defense attorney claimed that Funches lives in the house with his family, and, the lawyer argued, other people may have access to the office where the items were allegedly found.
He said Funches is self-employed as a party decorator, a business he built from scratch, and they were expecting all of the narcotics cases to be “disposed of” this week.
Judge David Kelly held Funches without bail for violating bond conditions in the narcotics matters. Separately, he said Funches would have to pay a $2,000 bail deposit to be released on the new charges of possessing an altered ID and issuing a fictitious identification.