An illegal immigrant stayed in Britain for five years after he bought a blank passport on the black market which was among 3,600 stolen in a raid on a delivery van.
Mohammed Arshad, 49, is thought to have paid up to £1,000 for the bogus document after it was stolen in July 2008 during an 'insider job' robbery on a the van travelling to an RAF base.
The delivery driver had made an unscheduled stop at a newsagents in Chadderton, near Oldham, Greater Manchester to buy a newspaper and a Mars Bar.
The driver had left a colleague in the passenger seat only to return to see the van being driven away.
The passenger Alan Burke claimed the hijackers had forced his head onto the dashboard before driving the vehicle 100 yards down the road and raiding its contents.
But Burke was later arrested after inquiries revealed he was in cahoots with an Asian crime gang plotting to sell blank passports and visas on the black market in an immigration scam.
In all 24 boxes containing 3,650 blank passports and 8,100 visas were snatched. They were due to be fielded by staff at RAF Northolt near London for distribution to British Embassies worldwide.
Around 1,500 visas and more than 2,000 passports were recovered in 2009. And in June 2012 a further 877 of the stolen visas were found stuffed inside a black plastic bin liner in the loft of a house during a police raid.
+5
Hoard: Some of the 3,600 passports that were stolen from the courier van in Chadderton, Greater Manchester
At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, Arshad admitted possessing identity documents with intent to commit fraud and was jailed for 12 months.
He now faces automatic deportation upon his release. He will have to pay a £100 victim surcharge and surrender his travel documents.
+5
Passenger Alan Burke said the hijackers had forced his head on the dashboard as they stole the van but was later found to have been in cahoots with an Asian crime gang
Burke, 54, was jailed for four and a half years for conspiracy to steal. Four Asian men were locked away for a total of 14 years.
Arshad, Oldham, acquired one of the passports after his six month visas ran out in August 2008.
It was forged and was shown to be valid from 23 June 2010 until 23 June 2020 and it is believed he used it for identification purposes.
He was caught on Boxing Day last year at Manchester Airport when it is believed a micro chip in the passport flagged it as suspicious as as he attempted to board a flight to his native Pakistan.
His passport was examined by a forgery trained Border Force officer who identified it as one of those stolen in the raid.
After the case Det Sgt John Murdoch, said: 'A significant number of passports and visas were stolen in 2008 and while many have been recovered, clearly some remain in circulation.
'We are not naove enough to think that people will not try and use them but what this case shows is that no matter how long they remain dormant, if someone is prepared to try them out,
there are specialist officers on hand with the skill and expertise to spot a fake, no matter how good the forgery.
'Arshad was an illegal immigrant attempting to fly to Pakistan who will automatically be deported upon the completion of his sentence and while that means he will get to complete his journey,
it will come at the expense of a 12 month prison sentence.'
+5
+5
Mohammed Bilal Khan, left, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison while Jawad Karim, right, was given 21 months detention in a young offender's institute
Following the theft police from the former Serious Organised Crime Agency and Greater manchester Police carried out six month operation with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to track down the thieves.
This operation resulted in a number of arrests on 4 January 2009, when a car was stopped on the M62 near Oldham and was found top contain nearly 1500 visas and 1600 passports.
It emerged Burke had been involved in a similar crime in 2006, when 900 passports went missing from his care.
No comments:
Post a Comment