Penang’s Immigration Department has broken up a syndicate that printed counterfeit foreign worker e-passes, arresting two Bangladeshi men at a rented house in Simpang Ampat on Thursday night.
The state immigration director, Syamsul Fitry Ahmad, said the pair, aged 23 and 32, were detained in a 10pm raid after public tip-offs and several days of intelligence gathering, the New Straits Times reported. He briefed reporters at the Penang Immigration headquarters in Seberang Jaya on Friday.
Officers found forged and altered e-pass printouts inside the house, including one carrying the particulars of a suspect and others belonging to different foreigners. Several foreign passports that belonged to neither man were seized, along with a large quantity of altered e-passes that appeared ready for distribution to buyers.
Syamsul said the documents traced to the construction sector, with the syndicate selling to Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals who were undocumented or had overstayed. The method was to edit e-pass and passport details on a laptop, then print the result to deceive employers and enforcement officers.
The syndicate was believed to have started operating recently and charged between RM50 and RM100 for each fake pass. Payment records showed some buyers paying RM500 to RM1,000, The Star noted, against a genuine annual renewal that starts at RM2,000.
An e-pass is issued to foreign workers under the Visit Pass (Temporary Employment) and is renewed every year, which is what gives the paperwork a price worth forging. Both men are being investigated under Section 56(1)(l) and Section 52(d) of the Immigration Act 1959/63 and Section 12(1)(f) of the Passports Act 1966, Bernama wrote.
More than 50 suspected forged documents have been identified so far, though the exact number is still under investigation because material was recovered both at the house and inside the men’s laptops and mobile phones.
Officers also seized phones, laptops and printers used to produce the documents, plus a car and two motorcycles suspected of serving the operation. The 23-year-old held a valid passport and a construction sector work pass, while his older accomplice had no valid document or pass to remain in the country.
Both men have been remanded for 14 days. Syamsul said a forged e-pass is hard to detect by eye because it looks nearly identical to a genuine one, but immigration officers can verify it by scanning the QR code and checking the counter system.
Further checks will establish whether the two men belong to a wider network, he added.
