Pssst!!! wanna Passport, Driving Licence ... ID card ?
Police raided a 2 bedroomed flat in Poplar Grove, Colney Hatch, north London, yesterday and discovered 1,800 alleged counterfeit passports, which they claim have a street value off £1m.
The Identity and Passport Service said the fake passports were of a design which has not been used since 2001 but which will of course be legal for several years to come.
In Manchester the current street price for a fake UK passport is said to be about £200 and a stolen / altered one about £250 .UK driving licences cost about £100.
Five men from Albania, Bulgaria and Kosovo, were arrested ;
Krum Angelov Poibrenski, 31, no address
Kiril Velev, 29, of Ballards Lane, Finchley, north London
Dennis Cenolli, 25, of Collingwood Court, Station Road, New Barnet
Altin Ibrahimi, 30, no address, have all been charged with are all charged with possession of articles to manufacture identity documents and possession of identity documents with intent.
Krum Angelov Poibrenski, 31, no address
Kiril Velev, 29, of Ballards Lane, Finchley, north London
Dennis Cenolli, 25, of Collingwood Court, Station Road, New Barnet
Altin Ibrahimi, 30, no address, have all been charged with are all charged with possession of articles to manufacture identity documents and possession of identity documents with intent.
Stoyan Minchev, 28, of Ballards Lane, Finchley, is also charged with one count of possession of articles to manufacture identity documents.
Readers with a long memory may recall Mahieidine Daikh (see pic) a languid and apparently unconcerned 35 year old of Algerian origin (?) was was arrested at Bangkok's Don Muang airport on 2nd August 2005, with 452 fake passports from France, Spain, Portugal and Belgium. He said he had been promised £15,000 to take the passports into London and was routed to fly into Glasgow.
Readers with a long memory may recall Mahieidine Daikh (see pic) a languid and apparently unconcerned 35 year old of Algerian origin (?) was was arrested at Bangkok's Don Muang airport on 2nd August 2005, with 452 fake passports from France, Spain, Portugal and Belgium. He said he had been promised £15,000 to take the passports into London and was routed to fly into Glasgow.
Daikh is reported to have told the Bangkok Police that he had lived in London for 7 years and was granted British citizenship two years ago. The passports are said to be worth £2,000 each in the UK market.
Daikh , who has UK citizenship is now back and living in Wandsworth. Possession of UK passports in Bangkok is apparently not an offence.
2 comments:
At their current rate of convergence, street prices for dodgy UK passports in South London will be about the same as real ones by the end of the year. You can get them quicker too...
The majority of the fake passports and driving licences reported in this, and in most other counterfeiting cases are foreign documents.
Even a perfect UK ID Card / National Identity Register / Biometric Passport scheme will have no effect on such criminals, except to allow them to raise their prices for fake UK documents, which they will still produce for use in countries where they cannot be easily checked with the UK Government.
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