Thailand’s Immigration Bureau commander Pol. Lt. General Sompong Chingduang says the biometric system at Suvarnabhumi Airport caught three foreigners carrying fake passports in the past month.
First case: A 47-year-old Iranian man holding a French passport and traveling from Germany to Thailand. The biometric scanning showed only a 19% match from his facial identity and passport photo. The Iranian was then taken into custody.
Reports said that the man confessed to buying a fake passport in France for €520, in order to travel to Thailand and then on to Japan to seek employment.
Second case: A Chinese man, in his 50’s, carrying a Burmese passport. The biometric scanner revealed that his passport’s Machine Readable Zone had been altered. The suspect later confessed that he bought the fake passport from Rangoon for 25,000 Burmese Kyat (500 Baht) to travel to Thailand.
Case number three: A 28-year-old Kenyan woman was detained while trying to leave Thailand. Immigration official says she was trying to get away with having overstayed her visa.
The biometric system alerted officials that she had overstayed in the country for two years. Her original visa allowed her to stay until September 15, 2017, and a fake stamp was used to give a new expiry date. She later confessed that she sent her passport to Kenya to have it altered at a cost of 10,000 Baht.
Source: The Nation
