Adams family enforcer sold fraudulent passports to fugitive gangsters across Europe
A FORMER enforcer with the notorious Adams crime family sold fraudulent passports to dozens of wanted gangsters across Europe.
Christopher Zietek, also known as Mccormack, has been jailed for acting as a broker for fugitives who needed false documents to stay one step ahead of the law. He helped murderers, drug dealers and money launderers remain at large along with Anthony Beard, 61, who sourced real passports, known as Fogs (fraudulently obtained genuine passports), that were taken out in the names of vulnerable people, often with drinks and drugs problems.
The Fog passports are harder to detect than counterfeits.
Zietek, who divided his time between south London, Ireland and Spain, was a debt collector and bodybuilder who acted as muscle for the powerful Clerkenwell crime syndicate, founded by the Irish Adams brothers and known as the Adams family. In 1999, he was acquitted of grievous bodily harm after being accused of attacking a financier who owed the Adams brothers money.
The convicted armed robber was arrested in 2021 after a covert investiga- tion into the passports scam by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
Beard would offer his targets as little as £100 to let him apply for a passport renewal in their name. Using a photograph of the criminal who needed a new identity, he would fill in all the forms and take collection of the fraudulent documents before selling them on for up to £15,000.
Zietek would then provide the passports to criminals who needed them.
Among the recipients of the fraudulent passports were killers and drug traffickers from Glasgow and Liverpool. The gang also attempted to source a passport for Jamie Acourt, one of the suspected killers of Stephen Lawrence, who was on the run in Spain at the time.
Zietek was sentenced to eight years at Reading Crown Court for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, conspiracy to make a false instrument with intent and converting criminal property.
Beard was jailed for six years and eight months after admitting conspiracy to make a false instrument with intent and to pervert the course of justice. A third defendant, Alan Thompson, 72, Zietek’s right-hand man, was jailed for three years on the same charges.