PUTRAJAYA: The Immigration Department has detained a Bangladeshi man suspected to be the mastermind of a syndicate falsifying passport details, believed to be the first of its kind.
The syndicate, which has been operating for two years, falsified the passport details of Bangladeshis and other foreigners with expired passports by tearing the front page of the passport and sticking a new page with "updated" expiry dates.
The syndicate would charge around RM1,000 to RM1,500 per person for the falsified documents.
The passports with forged details would then be used by the foreigners to obtain Foreign Workers Medical Examination Monitoring Agency (Fomema) clearance.
The syndicate had charged RM600 to RM1,000 per person for getting Fomema clearance.
Immigration Department director-general Datuk Ruslin Jusoh said the 38-year-old mastermind, known as "Ofu Bhai", was detained without a valid travel document alongside his partner, a 40-year-old Filipino who had overstayed.
In a raid at premises in Kajang on Friday, he said, the department seized a set of computers and 211 expired passports of which 199 were from Bangladesh.
He said others included passports from India, the Philippines and Indonesia.
They also seized 31 front-page sheets with falsified documents, 144 sheets of Fomema documents, various tools for falsifying documents and RM16,000 in cash.
"The passports are real passports but only the sheets are fake with no security features.
"They would use a sort of oil to tear off the front page, print the new sheet with an updated expiry date and stick on the new one to deceive the authorities.
"The cash we seized was not much — only RM16,000 — but we believe that they would have more as most of the money would have been transferred online to avoid being traced," said Ruslin, adding that the department has been investigating the syndicate for three weeks.
He added that the department was widening its investigations and looking into the syndicate's other networks in the country.
"We are not only targeting those in Kuala Lumpur and the rest of the Klang Valley but also looking into the possibility that this also happens in Johor as there have been cases of falsified documents there as well," he said.
Ruslin said both of the suspects have been remanded for 14 days at the Putrajaya Immigration depot to facilitate investigations under Section 55D of the Immigration Act 1956/63 and Section 12(1)(a) of the Passport Act 1966.
"The foreigners don't want to go back to their hometowns so they try to look for unlawful ways (to stay here).
"We will continue combatting issues of falsifying passport documents," he said.
