The Thai Immigration Police recently started using the Biometrics System at the airport. In a period of only 3 days, 8 foreigners were discovered using fake passports. Many of the suspects have one fact in common, is that the passports were purchased from an Iranian Agent.
The Immigration Police reported on the 13th of this month (September 2019) about the arrest of foreigners who were using fake passports travelling into Thailand. The Biometrics proved extremely efficient after only 3 days in use. All of the suspects have one thing in common, they have travelled into Thailand with a goal to travel into a 3rd destination country, which are usually nations in the EU.
The first group of suspects were a family of 3 from Iran. They were all using fake passports with a goal to travel into the UK with hopes of seeking asylum. When caught, the family stated that they bought the passports from an Iranian agent who ordered the fake passports for the 3. They had to go pick the fake passports in Turkey before using their new passports and travelled into Thailand.
There was also another Iranian man arrested after the passport displayed in the Biometrics system as “Stolen Passport” based on the Interpol Data. A Syrian man was arrested along with 3 Palestinian women. They had travelled from Abu Dhabi using Sweden Passports to enter Thailand. They pretended to be tourists, but they had planned to travel to another country to seek asylum. All of them were busted when the Biometrics data system on the passport information did not look like any of them.
All of these cases have one thing in common. They all had contacted a Iranian Agent who ordered the passports for them. Each paid a fee from 4,000 to 500,000 EUR or about 136,000 to 1,700,000 THB, a very large sum of money but they were all seeking asylum and desperate needs oftentimes demand a high pay.
A Nigerian man was arrested for using a fake African Passport. He had travelled into Thailand from Turkey and planned to enter South Korea for illegal work. The man purchased the fake passport from an African Agent and it cost him 600 USD or about 18,000 THB.
Furthermore, the Biometrics system in 16 international airports discovered 1,123 individuals on the Blacklist and Watchlist. A total of 662 individuals were arrested from arrest warrants. Over 45,000 individuals were discovered to have overstayed their visa in Thailand. The total of 3 days brought in over 81 Million THB to the nation.
The Biometrics system will read the chip in the passport and the database of the traveller. If the information such as appearance does not match up with the database found in the chip using detection technology including Infrared scans. If there is no database it can be a case of a fake passport or an unregistered alien in the country.
