Attorney General Dustin McDaniel filed a consumer-protection lawsuit Tuesday against a company that produces identification cards designed to look like state-issued driver’s licenses and IDs.
Connecticut-based AmeraCard Enterprises Inc., owned by Joseph Cassara of Stamford, Conn., produces and sells the ID cards, which have “no official function or legal significance,” McDaniel said in a statement Tuesday.
About 1,200 “Arkansas Identification Cards" have been sold by various vendors for $70 a piece across the state since 2009, according to the statement.
The cards have an expiration date, signature line and demographic data like an official driver’s license, but McDaniel said that a disclaimer on the back of the card is “not enough to keep a consumer from believing it to be an actual ID.”
“These cards are advertised as being acceptable as secondary identification in some instances, even as a primary ID. Those claims and the other claims used by the company to urge Arkansas vendors to sell these IDs are patently false,” McDaniel said in the statement.
The lawsuit, filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court, states that the company violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Read Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more on this story.