Passports for sale scandal

A trade in forged passports is being run openly in London, an Evening Standard investigation reveals today.

False passports and other documents for illegal immigrants are advertised for sale in the window of a west London newsagent.

Undercover reporters were able to buy an illegally-altered passport for £600 in only three days.

Today's revelations follow the release of a government document outlining proposals to clamp down on illegal working by asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants involving hundreds of thousands of people.

The report identifies agriculture, construction, catering, food processing and hospitality as industries where illegal working is prevalent. All rely heavily on contract or casual labour. Increasing numbers of foreign workers are being used to pick fruit and vegetables.

The East European gangs running the passport racket have escaped the notice of the police and Home Office so far by simply writing the adverts in Polish.

After ringing the mobile phone number on one small ad, Standard undercover reporters bought a genuine British passport in which the original photograph had been replaced.

As well as the passport, the reporters bought a hard-to-spot fake Home Office document declaring its holder to be a genuine asylum seeker. Armed with that, an illegal immigrant could work freely and also potentially claim thousands of pounds in benefits.

The criminals running the racket claim that nothing is done to hinder their activities. "You can do whatever you want to here," said one.

An illegal immigrant caught with a forged passport would be likely to get six to 12 months and deportation at the end of their sentence. A Home Office spokesman said: "These are not the most sophisticated of forgeries, but any forgery is something we are concerned about."

Identity fraud is a huge problem, costing the economy around £1.3 billion a year in credit card or benefit fraud.

Figures for 2001 show that 3,231 driving tests were stopped because of doubts over the identity of the person taking the test, 1,484 fraudulent passport applications were detected and 50 cases a month of bogus documents were identified at Heathrow.

One to two per cent of all credit card sales were lost due to fraud.

A report revealed the identities of more than 1,000 babies who died before their first birthday were "stolen" and sold to illegal immigrants who then applied for false documents in the child's name.

A computer now crossmatches passport applications with records of childhood fatalities. But the numbers involved make it impossible to catch every fraudster.

Hundreds of thousands of men and women could be working illegally because of the availability of forged documents.