More than 1,000 stolen passports from 60 nations were seized from a forger busted southeast of Bangkok in Chonburi province.
The Department of Special Investigations believed it found the broke up the biggest fake passport racket on Sunday when it raided a residence it operated from and arrested Murel Gurat, a 45-year-old Iranian national.
Col. Songsak Raksaksakul of the department’s transnational crime division told the Associated Press the raid was the culmination of a two-year investigation of the ring, which it believes has operated in Thailand for over a decade.
“You never saw more than 1,000 passports from 65 countries that went missing show up here in one place,” Songsak said. “This is the evidence that showed this network was well connected to other groups all over the world.”
The trade in illicit documents was highlighted last year when it turned out that two Iranian men aboard Malaysian Airlines MH370 traveling with passports stolen in Phuket. It was later determined the men had nothing to do with the plane’s disappearance.
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Pattaya travel agent IDs Iranian who bought impostors’ tickets
