'At every step you can be found out', passport fraudster says

David Garrett was inspired by the assassination thriller <i>The Day of the Jackal</i> to obtain a fake passport. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A woman who faked dozens of passports says the chances of getting caught are high and no one would do it as a lark.

The woman, who wanted to be known only as Mary, was sentenced twice for passport fraud (to a total of 8 years) and spent three years in prison.

Mary said she began faking passports after escaping New Zealand to avoid a conviction for insurance fraud.

She said she used a false passport to get back into the country and then faked others to commit more fraud.

She said Act MP David Garrett would have had to jump through many hoops to get a fake passport and could have been caught at every step of the way.

"When he said that he did it to see if he could get away with it ... what utter bullshit. There's no way you would do it just as a lark ... There's no way anyone would go through that kind of thing, because every step of the way you have the risk of getting caught. Every step."

She said using fake referees, addresses and applying for dead people's birth certificates were all ways of attracting the attention of the authorities.

Another woman who says she too got a passport in a dead child's name is incredulous Mr Garrett had obtained one just to see if he could. "You don't get false passports for no reason. You don't get one to see if you can get it," she told the Herald yesterday.

She said the number of processes she had to go through was terrifying. "At every step you can be found out."

She said she obtained hers in 1989 or 1990 and was never caught. She left New Zealand on it in 1990 and returned in 1993.

She had been advised by a retired police officer on how to get it.

At the time, she was part of the criminal world and said she was being harassed by the police.

"I was quite suicidal at the time and I was desperate to get out."

She flew from Auckland to Wellington and visited a cemetery in the capital to choose a child born about the same time as she was, by going through the yearbooks.

"I actually visited the grave and said I was sorry to the baby for what I was doing, but it was the only way I felt I could survive at the time, and [promised] that I would try not to discredit that baby's name."

She applied for the birth certificate in Lower Hutt, flew to Christchurch and applied for an urgent passport from there, giving her address as one that was actually a motel's.

She stayed at the motel and told the managers she might be getting mail there. When the passport arrived by mail at the motel, she flew back to Christchurch to pick it up.

She left immediately for the United States and stayed there for three years where, she said, she obtained another passport in someone else's name.

"When I came back through Customs I was absolutely terrified. I expected to be arrested, and all they said to me was, 'Hello, welcome back to New Zealand'."

After she returned, a family member eventually "shopped" her to the police. She was not prosecuted, but the police told her the circumstances of the child's death.

It had been the result of a tragedy, and it still haunted her.