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Southeast Asia |
Thailand Emerges As Fake Passport Capital |
2005-09-09 |
![]() "The people who use these fake documents and passports are terrorists, fugitives and people illegally transferring or laundering money or opening bank accounts," said Col. Chote Kuldiloke, who oversees such investigations at the Immigration Police Bureau. The most commonly seized fakes are Belgian, French, Portuguese and Spanish passports, which Thai police say are easily copied. Thai police seized 353 such passports from a Greek courier en route to London in March 2004 and 100 from a Spaniard and Dutchman trying to sell them in February to an undercover policeman in Bangkok. Another 452 were taken from Algerian-born Briton Mahieddine Daikh, who was going to deliver them to London in early August. ![]() Many of these passports are sold by or stolen from the more than 10 million tourists who visit Thailand each year. One 24-year-old French tourist said he was offered $240 by a clean-cut Iranian man in his 30s staying at the same guesthouse he was at on Bangkok's Khao San Road — the popular backpacker district that police say is a major source of black market passports. "Some Westerners will sell their passports for $500 to get quick cash, and then they'll say it was stolen, so it's hard to crack down," immigration policeman Chote said. The passport is then sold to an alterer, who will change either the photo, the page with biographical data or the entire cover of the book. What counts is the visas inside. Thai police teamed up with a Pakistani man who acted as a buyer to catch alterer Sabananthan Kanagasabai, who carried his real Sri Lankan passport as well as at least four fakes — three from India and one from Canada. His work was impeccable, but crafted with simple items such as a laminator, blow dryer, hole puncher, paper cutter and a desktop computer, all in his modest studio apartment workspace. Police found 73 fake visa and immigration stamps from around the world, including Thai and Indonesian consular stamps from Munich, Madras, Paris and Vientiane. They seized from him 255 passports from 33 different countries, mostly European and Asian. He would deliver the altered passports by FedEx in a hidden compartment cut inside a children's book, Beatrix Potter's Nursery Rhyme Book. A passport with visas to the United States or the United Kingdom, which are hard to fake because of stricter security measures, can sell for $2,400. A U.S. passport with a changed photo can fetch $2,900. Australian Federal Police and their Thai counterparts have set up an intelligence center to tackle transnational crime and forgery, and police from eight countries — Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, Australia and the United States — convene with Thai police at a monthly meeting in Bangkok to fight identity fraud. One European police officer said he has been stationed in Bangkok for 18 months specifically because of forged passports, which he called "a bridge to all sorts of criminality." He said forged passports sourced from Thailand emerged as a problem in his country two to three years ago. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want his identity and presence here to be known by criminals. "Thailand is a country where you can buy knockoff DVDs, handbags. Passports are just another part of that industry to a degree. The mindset of the passport producer is the same as the person producing Rolex watches: It's a business venture," he said. The maximum punishment is relatively light — five years jail time and a $240 fine for faking Thai government documents or possession of stolen property, such as a foreign passport. Chote said police are trying to exact a harsher penalty by multiplying it by the number of fake documents seized. |
Posted by:Seafarious |
#3 Don't forget the religion column... |
Posted by: tu3031 2005-09-09 15:39 |
#2 Five years in a Thai jail doesn't exactly sound like light punishment to me. |
Posted by: Raj 2005-09-09 10:52 |
#1 Beating the Paks on quality. |
Posted by: Shipman 2005-09-09 09:13 |