Ring My Bell

This case begins with South Plainfield's police getting new cell phones with new numbers.

That's when Capt. Paul Brembt started getting repeated calls from people speaking Spanish. Over and over.

"At first I thought somebody was playing a joke after I just got the phone," Brembt said.

Brembt wanted to get to the bottom of the annoying calls, so he enlisted the help of Officer Antonio Grasso, who speaks Spanish, to answer his cell and tell people to stop calling.

But when Grasso got the gist of the calls, the police no longer wanted people to stop calling. Instead, they set up a sting.

It seems Brembt's new number was the old number for a man named "Jorge" who was selling fraudulent licenses for $1,500 to illegals using fictitious Social Security numbers.

This is one of the most bizarre situations I can recall. Serendipity has allowed cops to track down a player in the trade of illegal and forged documents, as well as catch illegal immigrants seeking out those documents.

It's a twofer!

Now, if only the cops can manage to track down the ringleader. Sadly there are many people willing to trade in phony and forged ids, as well as ids procured under false pretenses. Local law enforcement is always slow to deal with this crime, but this incident has allowed local cops to get the jump on a major national security issue.