Grand Rapids Reporter

A Wyoming woman who used a fake identification card and fraudulent social security number 12 years ago to obtain work while underage is now blaming the company who hired her for accepting the documents.

That’s according to a Nov. 14 filing by Grand Rapids-based Forge Industrial Staffing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

Nubia K. Malacara, now 27, duped Forge by using documents representing that she was age-eligible when she was not.

“Ms. Malacara reported a date of birth of November 10, 1992 in her application materials, which would have made her 19 at the time,” Forge said.

It said company records show Malacara worked as a “temporary worker for three days in 2011,” assigned to Hearthside, which makes cereal and snacks.

The filing said Malacara applied and was hired for an administrative job with Forge in 2021, at age 25, using a different date of birth and social security number. 

“After working for less than a year, Ms. Malacara voluntarily resigned without notice in July 2022,” Forge said. “Ms. Malacara deleted all of her company e-mail folders before she resigned.”

Six months later, Malacara was quoted in a New York Times story claiming that Forge and Hearthside were “knowingly employing minors.”

The story led to an investigation of Forge  by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service requires companies like Forge and Hearthside to accept documentation that “reasonably appears to be genuine” or face penalties for discrimination.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) bars employers from requiring specific identification documents from prospective employees, including a social security card, because doing so “disproportionately screens out work-authorized individuals of a certain national origin, such as newly arrived immigrants.”

Last year, state labor regulators investigated and fined Hyundai’s Montgomery, Alabama plant after they found a 16 year old illegal alien from Mexico who had similarly duped the company using fake identification, a “forged Tennessee ID and a phony social security card,” according to a report in Reuters.

The boy’s credentials had “repeatedly” cleared the federal government’s “E-verify” system, which is supposed to vet prospective employees to determine if they are authorized to work, the report said.

Founded in 1995, Forge primarily serves industrial manufacturers. It operates 12 offices across Michigan and Indiana.