A 58-year-old Indonesian man, who allegedly ran a syndicate specializing in forging passports and work permits, was arrested by the Malaysian authorities on Monday night in Petaling Jaya.
The special intelligence unit from the Immigration Department learned that the syndicate named “Wak Jam” had been active for as long as five years, providing illegal Indonesian migrants with high quality fake passports and work permits, Sin Chew Daily (Malaysia) reported.
Following a month-long surveillance operation, at 8pm on July 9, officers raided a house in Kampung Lindungan and arrested the suspect. They also seized fake documents including 11 Indonesian passports, 38 torn biodata pages from Indonesian passports and 11 falsified work permits.
Confiscated equipment used in the production of fake documents included multiple forged entry and exit stamps representing immigration stamps from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
Preliminary investigation determined that the syndicate was allegedly earning 50,000 ringgits (US$12,396) per month on average, charging 50 ringgits (US$12.4) per stamp, or between 100 ringgits and 200 ringgits for altering a passport.