Fake ID syndicate crippled, 13 held
Published on: Thursday, February 01, 2018
Sandakan: The National Registration Department (JPN) has smashed a syndicate engaged in forging identification documents in eastern Sabah with the arrest of 13 people, two of them believed to be agents.JPN Director-General Datuk Mohammad Razin Abdullah said the arrests were made following two raids, in Tawau last Friday and in this district early Wednesday.Eleven people, one of them an agent, were arrested in Tawau, he said, adding that they comprised a man and 10 women.
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Two people, one of them a 52-year-old woman agent, were arrested in the raid on a house in the Sedco Industrial Area at Mile 1½, Sandakan at 2am Wednesday, he told a press conference here.Mohammad Razin said several identification documents, among them birth certificates and identity cards, were seized in the raids.He said the two agents, one of them a 52-year-old man arrested in Tawau, were Malaysians while the 11 others were Filipino and Indonesian nationals.An initial investigation showed the syndicate charged between RM300 and RM6,000 for a birth certificate or an identity card for illegal immigrants from the Philippines or Indonesia.
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In Tawau, the syndicate also bought the birth certificates of children who had died in the districts of Semporna, Kunak and Lahad Datu but had not yet registered their deaths at the department, he said.He said the agents would buy the documents from the parents or other family members for RM2,000 and sell them to Pakistani nationals for RM20,000.
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