Six arrested for passport scam

Ran photocopying as front business

BANGKOK: -- Six people have been arrested for producing fake passports after allegedly setting up a photocopying shop in Bangkok as a front. The Immigration Police Bureau, in announcing the arrest of the six, only identified one _ Veerasak Wannasri, 39.

The gang was nabbed at a shophouse, believed to be where they forged the passports, on Soi Wutthakat in the Chom Thong area.

Pol Lt-Gen Suwat Damrongsrisakul, the bureau commissioner, said police seized 2,000 fake Belgian and Portuguese passports from the shophouse.

They also impounded a printing machine allegedly used to churn out the documents.

Mr Veerasak confessed that he rented the shophouse and ran a photocopying business as a front for the production of fake passports.

The gang received many orders from illegal brokers abroad after opening the shop a month ago.

The suspects are charged with falsifying official documents.

--Bangkok Post 2006-04-09

Six arrested for passport scam

Ran photocopying as front business

BANGKOK: -- Six people have been arrested for producing fake passports after allegedly setting up a photocopying shop in Bangkok as a front. The Immigration Police Bureau, in announcing the arrest of the six, only identified one _ Veerasak Wannasri, 39.

The gang was nabbed at a shophouse, believed to be where they forged the passports, on Soi Wutthakat in the Chom Thong area.

Pol Lt-Gen Suwat Damrongsrisakul, the bureau commissioner, said police seized 2,000 fake Belgian and Portuguese passports from the shophouse.

They also impounded a printing machine allegedly used to churn out the documents.

Mr Veerasak confessed that he rented the shophouse and ran a photocopying business as a front for the production of fake passports.

The gang received many orders from illegal brokers abroad after opening the shop a month ago.

The suspects are charged with falsifying official documents.

--Bangkok Post 2006-04-09

Belgian and Portugeuse passports always seem to feature heavily in the fake passport scam!

Is it because they are easier than others to forge?

Because as relatively smaller countries there is less scrutiny?

Because of their colonial pass a non-white might not raise suspicians (what about the UK though)

Edited April 9, 200620 yr by Prakanong2005