FARMINGTON — A set of Farmington twins made the Utah Driver License Division look twice at their applications after their photos set off fraud warnings in the facial recognition program.
Identical twins Nalan Aeon and Zeynip Trueherz say they've pulled plenty of tricks in their 50 years.
"We did it a lot with future husbands or with people we were dating, to try out if they really know us," Aeon said. "With the exception of my husband, no one really noticed when I sent my sister. My husband was the only one that noticed right away."
But when Aeon lost her driver's license at the same time Trueherz's license expired, the sisters say they didn't make any plans to stump the state.
"We just try to stay legal," Aeon said. "We could pull tricks illegally, but we don't want to do that."
Trueherz went in the second week of July, and her sister about a week later. Within a few days, they received letters requesting the pair return to the Driver License Division building.
"It said something like your driver's license is suspended, but it didn't explain why," Aeon said.
"We had absolutely no idea until we saw them and they started laughing,” Aeon said. “Then we figured, maybe it's because we are twins."
Darren Larsen, northern manager of the Utah Driver License Division, said each time someone applies for a new or replacement license their picture is compared against thousands already in the database.
"When it recognizes certain matches, facial recognition people look that over, pull the application, pull the documents. We look at everything to see if we want to pursue that," Larsen said, adding they've never seen a set of twins buck the system before, but have caught a few frauds.
Red flags were raised because the identical photos came back with two very different names in its database.
"There's been instances where we have had people using other documents that aren't theirs, so it's been a good resource for us," Larsen said.
Aeon and Trueherz said they're relieved they have their licenses back and can finally put the confusion behind them.
"It was a little bit of an inconvenience, but that's all right," Aeon said. "I understand it's a safety issue. There are people that do these kinds of things."
The twins joked that they may renew their licenses in different states to avoid issues in the future.
Email: bbodily@deseretnews.com