In October 2009 five men were jailed for their involvement in the theft of passports worth £2.5 million. Boxes containing around 3,000 blank passports and visas destined for embassies abroad were stolen in the raid in July last year. All five men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to handle stolen goods during a trial at Manchester Crown Court, two men of the men were apprehended with nearly 1,500 visas and 1.600 passports and later a further 600 passports were uncovered. Investigations into the outstanding passports and visas are ongoing. In a separate police operation, another 22 passports have been recovered and three men have been charged with conspiracy to handle stolen goods.
Following the reports Ex-Fraud Squad Officer Richard Connelly of Agenda Security Services said
“The high availability of fake and stolen identity documents means that it is more important than ever to check the documents at source, just because a document looks real does not mean that it is.” He went on to say “All employers face the risk of employing illegal workers, fraudsters or thieves using assumed identities and Agenda prides itself on providing professional checking services that remove this risk.” Norman Mortell, Director at Agenda Security Services went onto say “There are useful free resources available to everybody to enable you to check the validity of documents such as the advice provided by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) on the following link http://www.cpni.gov.uk/ProtectingYourAssets/personnelsecurity-268.aspx. However, it is vital to check with the relevant authorities that the document you have checked is associated with the appropriate individual”.
If you have any concerns or would like free and impartial advice on the checking of identification documents please contact Agenda at info@agenda-security.co.uk.
