PASSPORTS FOR SALE ON FACEBOOK

Revealed: Criminals peddle stolen and fake UK travel documents on social media for as little as £800

Black market British passports are being sold openly on social media.

Genuine and fake versions can be bought for as little as £800, a Daily Mail investigation shows.

One page on Facebook has been used to trade illegal British passports for at least three years.

We also found that passports cloned with details taken from real passports were being touted for a few hundred pounds on other easilyaccessible websites. The revelations follow yesterday’s Mail investigation into how stolen British passports are spirited to Turkey to be sold by people smugglers.

David Ibsen, a security expert who advised the US government, said it was no surprise Facebook was being used to hawk passports that could fall into the hands of terrorists. ‘It is well known that extremists use Facebook as a tool to achieve their goals,’ he said. ‘The Mail is to be congratulated for exposing something that poses a genuine danger.

‘We continue to see Facebook failing to address its platform’s role in encouraging and proliferating terrorism.’

One Facebook page in Arabic – called European Passports For Sale VIP – features multiple pictures of British travel papers.

The site boasts: ‘We sell passports from £800 to £2,600. We are not traffickers. We’re just selling the passport