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Iranian man arrested over forgery scam in possession of 1,000 stolen passports from 60 countries
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 19 March, 2015, 12:58am
UPDATED : Thursday, 19 March, 2015, 12:58am
Associated Press in Bangkok
Department of Special Investigation officers display stolen passports during a press conference at the Department of Special Investigation Headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: AP
Thai authorities said yesterday they had arrested an Iranian man they accused of leading one of the largest passport forgery networks the country has seen.
Department of Special Investigation officials and police seized forgery equipment and 1,053 stolen passports from more than 60 nationalities, mostly European, during the arrest on Sunday, said police Colonel Songsak Raksaksakul, the agency's commissioner for transnational crimes.
Murel Gurat, 45, was apprehended at a house in coastal Chonburi province after two years of investigation by DSI officials, Songsak said.
He said Gurat's network had been operating in Thailand for more than a decade and was connected to Bangladeshi and Pakistani forgers arrested earlier.
"You never saw more than 1,000 passports from 65 countries that went missing show up here in one place. This is the evidence that showed this network was well connected to other groups all over the world," Songsak said.
Officials said the group sold, bought and forged the passports for those wanting to travel to a third country for different purposes, but the authorities' major concerns were about terrorism and transnational crimes.
Gurat is facing multiple charges, including forging passports and false documents and receiving stolen property - the offences carry a maximum jail term of 10 years. Gurat had a fake passport himself under the name Esrafil Bondar, authorities said.
Thailand was in the spotlight as a hub for false document crimes last year after two of the passengers on vanished Malaysia Airlines flight 370 were found to have boarded the plane using false identities based on passports stolen in Thailand.
