Crackdown on passport fraud

Criminals thinking of attempting passport fraud need to know they face a high chance of being caught and suffering severe penalties, the Internal Affairs Department warns.

The department is determined to identify fraudulent passport applications, regardless of how old the fraud was, it said yesterday.

The recent high-profile case of Peter Fulcher, who stole a dead child's identity to gain a false passport, had turned the spotlight on the problem.

The 66-year-old, who spent 10 years in jail for his part in the Mr Asia drug syndicate, had pleaded guilty to forgery, possession of a false passport and using the identity of the child.

Fulcher obtained the passport eight years ago, using the name of a child who died in 1945, but the deception was uncovered during an Internal Affairs audit last year.

Passports manager David Philip said while all new passport applications since 2003 had been checked against life event records, they had detected older cases where people had maliciously used a dead person's identity to obtain a false passport.

- NZPA