Looking on the Internet, you'd think the world is your oyster if you want to purchase a second passport.
Just a cursory search using Scroogle (www.scroogle.org, a private alternative to Google!) reveals "instant passport" deals from numerous countries, including The Bahamas, Belize, Burkino Faso, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Lithuania, Nicaragua, Panama, Switzerland, and at least two unnamed members of the European Union.
The price is right, too. One Web site offers a passport from an unnamed EU member in Central Europe for only US$9,900. There's even a "family plan" in which you receive a 50% discount for a second applicant. And that's not all! You also receive (drum roll, please) a new birth certificate.
Want to avoid those inconvenient border formalities? I found a Web site with just the ticket: a "diplomatic passport." With one of these babies, you can cross international frontiers without having your luggage inspected. And while you might think that diplomatic passports are issued to, well, diplomats, according to the promotional text, sometimes merely "giving the right amount of money to the right people" can result in diplomatic status.
Hint: These are All Scams!
Every one of these programs is a scam. Let's start with the "instant passports" from the unnamed EU countries.
The fact that you're offered a birth certificate "proving" you were born in the EU country is one virtually infallible indicator of fraud. Think about it. The new birth certificate is fraudulent in itself. It only follows that the passport based upon the fraudulent birth certificate is fraudulent as well.
What you're receiving, without exception, are documents that have been lost or stolen, obtained through bribery, or procured fraudulently. In all cases, the resulting passports are subject to cancellation and confiscation. Worse, if you use them, you may face fines and even imprisonment for possession of illegal travel documents. For instance, under U.K. law, entering the country on a fake or stolen passport carries a sentence of 10 years imprisonment.
That's not to say there's a shortage of false passports:
- About 60,000 valid Finnish passports are missing, many of them believed to be stolen
- An estimated 10,000 British passports were issued after fraudulent applications in the space of a year.
- An armed gang stole 9,000 blank French passports in Paris
- More than 2,500 blank Mexican passports were taken from a contract courier service in Mexico City
- About 2,500 Russian passports have been reported missing by the Ministry of the Interior.
- In Thailand, authorities have seized more than 1,000 fake passports.
In tomorrow's blog entry, I'll tell you how fake passports lead to government scandals…and why that means big trouble for anyone unfortunate enough to get caught with one. I'll also tell you how you can acquire a legitimate second passport.
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Nestmann
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