FAVOURITE TARGET: In the past three years, a fake or doctored Australian passport has been found, on average, once a week.
Source: Herald Sun
AUSTRALIANS’ identities are being stolen on a grand scale by spies and dealers in drugs, illegal migrants and for dirty money.
The nation was shocked a year ago when Israeli secret agents used forged passports of living Australians to assassinate a Hamas leader in Dubai.
But Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade documents obtained by the Herald Sun reveal the illegal practice is much more widespread.
Few details were released, in some cases to prevent damage to international relations or to protect information provided by foreign governments or police.
But in the past three years, a fake or doctored Australian passport has been found, on average, once a week.
Fake passports were detected at ports in countries including Britain, Dubai, Ghana, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Turkey, and Peru.
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Some were in the hands of spies, people smugglers and thieves.
Passports were used in 525 frauds in the last financial year, and many people were caught lying to get a passport.
Altered or fake passports were also found at local airports and banks, and even in pubs, in the hands of under-age teenagers.
In July, 36 blank passports were found at the Brooklyn home of slain crime patriarch Macchour Chaouk.
The director of the Australian Passport Office’s fraud section, Michael Lynch, said about 1800 passport frauds had been investigated in the past three years.
More than 150 passports had been forged or tampered with.
One source said international crime gangs went to extreme lengths to create or illegally obtain Australian passports, in some cases even shaving single passport pages in two.
The source said there was a strong trade in the passports, many of which were stolen in Asia, then distributed around the world.
Passport cases included:
TWO “lost” passports seized in Turkey in a people smuggling investigation.
A POLICE raid that uncovered four counterfeit passport pages and 55 ID pages from stolen passports.
A PARCEL with two fake passports and four citizenship certificates, intercepted at Sydney airport.
A PASSPORT found in the hands of a passport trafficker.
PASSPORT details of five people emailed to a travel agent for travel for people from Ghana.
A PASSPORT used by a relative to enter Australia and returned to its owner overseas, who damaged it and applied for a new one.
Other cases involved substitutions of photos or identity pages, alterations to signatures, and changes to birth dates, gender details, and passport expiry dates.
In one bizarre case, a woman admitted colouring the lips on her photo to improve its appearance.
Federal police prosecuted more than 20 passport-related cases in 32 months, according to documents released to the Herald Sun under Freedom of Information.
Most involved people trying to obtain a passport under false pretences or using one that was stolen or belonged to someone else.
Security improvements, including microchipping, have reduced passport and identity fraud, and the Federal Government has promised $100 million more over six years.
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Article source: http://www.perthnow.com.au/travel/news/aussie-identity-theft-on-grand-scale/story-fn30173u-1225982260250?from=public_rss
Category: Identity Theft Watch