The sale of thousands of false documents through the office of the Civil Registry has brought about the firing of the director and assistant director its central office of the Civil Register in Santo Domingo. Ricardo Thevenin and Florinda Salas were dismissed as a result of an investigation that detected the alteration of several of Civil Registry books, as well as the sale of thousands of false birth certificates to Chinese and Cuban citizens. Several other employees were similarly fired. The fraud was discovered after the US Embassy warned the Central Electoral Board (JCE) of their concerns that such practices were going on. The news was confirmed for the Listin Diario by the Civil Registry director for the JCE, Servio Tulio Almanzar. One of the ways in which the certificates were altered was by changing the data contained in the pages of the books, substituting the name of a person born in the Dominican Republic with the name of the person who needed the phony document. According to sources, the cost of such falsifications varied between RD$50,000 and RD$60,000 for a birth certificate. Several departments of the Central Office of the Civil Registry were affected by the cancellations, but the source could not provide a precise number. Also according to the source, over 200 of the massive books containing birth and death notices had been altered. The fraud was detected because the embassies routinely request copies of the birth certificates taken from the originals kept in the books at Central Civil Registry. Until now, there has never been a full-scale investigation into such charges.