Gardaí raid crime gang charging up to €400 for false identity papers
AN IRISH-BASED organised crime gang was charging up to €400 each to “customers” for bogus identity papers.
The Irish connection to the network was broken after officers from the Garda National Immigration Bureau uncovered their base and seized a haul of suspected false documentation, financial records, phones and cash.
An international group, which is under investigation for identity fraud in at least seven European jurisdictions, is reckoned to have netted an estimated €500,000 in payments in recent years.
The Irish-based gang is connected to a pan-European group, largely dominated by Georgian nationals involved in the large scale production and distribution of false identity and travel documents, including passports, national ID cards and driving licences.
Officers yesterday arrested a 22-year-old man and a 45-yearold woman in a residential premises in Cabra and a north county Dublin hotel.
Both suspects were taken to Blanchardstown garda station where they were being held and questioned under section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act, 2007, which allows them to be detained without charge for up to seven days.
A 61-year-old man was also arrested in Finglas yesterday and he was brought to Mountjoy Garda Station.
The searches and arrests were part of Operation Mombasa, which also resulted in the arrest of another suspect by police in Barcelona.
More false documents, flight tickets and evidence from parcel delivery services were discovered there.
Gardaí also arrested another suspect, a 47-year-old man, in Clondalkin, west Dublin last Thursday and he is also being held under section 50 in Ballymun station.
Similar police investigations into suspected identity fraud and the activities of an international organised crime gang are also under way in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Britain and Finland, with the assistance of Europol and agencies in the United States.
The Spanish police have arrested almost 100 Georgians with false identity papers in two years.
Operation Mombasa is described as a multi-jurisdictional investigation, that began here in late 2018.
Many of the suspects involved are using false identity documents while living and working in this country.
Mombasa was established after Icelandic and Spanish authorities intercepted Georgian nationals within their countries, who were involved in criminal offences.
Follow up inquiries established that some of those Georgian nationals had sourced false documents from Ireland.
Gardaí with the help of An Post intercepted packages in various EU states. The interceptions sparked off a number of searches and the arrest of a man in May last year.
Inquiries established that a suspected network of two families from Georgia, living in Dublin, were allegedly producing and providing false documents to other people across Europe.
They said this organisation produced and distributed fake documents, which helped foreign nationals to circumvent immigration laws for the purpose of entering Ireland and the UK illegally.