Passport forgery syndicate crippled
PUTRAJAYA: The Immigration Department has crippled a syndicate involved in falsifying passports and security stamps.
Immigration director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali said the Wak Jam syndicate’s activities were put to a stop in a raid in Kampung Lindungan, Petaling Jaya, earlier this week.
He said the syndicate was well known among illegal immigrants, with its clients mainly Indonesians.
“In the raid, an Immigration team arrested an Indonesian man, aged 58, believed to be the syndicate’s mastermind.
“Checks revealed he had a permanent resident card and is good at falsifying passports, especially those from Indonesia.”
He said the man admitted that the syndicate had been active for five years and raked in about RM50,000 a month.
“The syndicate charged RM50 for security stamps and between RM100 and RM200 for passports.”
He said the man was an expert at falsifying documents as the passports and security stamps that he forged appeared “95 per cent genuine”.
“The chemicals he uses to create the fake passports are things that we use every day, such as artificial pandan and red colouring used in baking.”
Also seized during the raid were Immigration entry and exit stamps for Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, all of which were fake.
Other items seized were six fake Indonesian embassy stamps, 38 sheets of Indonesia passport pages, 11 Indonesian passports, 11 genuine work passes that had been modified, two mobile phones and several equipment used to falsify documents and stamps.