Kip Powick Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 NEW DELHI – Transport Canada officials recently warned India's largest privately owned commercial airline it would be barred from operating flights to Canada if its reservation agents didn't do a better job detecting passengers travelling on bogus passports. Agents for Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canada Border Service Agency have discovered dozens of Jet Airways passengers arriving at Toronto's Pearson International Airport with fake travel documents in recent months, five sources familiar with the matter told the Star. After pressure from Canadian officials, Jet has reassigned responsibility for passenger security checks to its security division from its customer service department. "We want to root out this menace as much as anyone," said Ragini Chopra, a Jet spokesperson. In most cases, a person with an extensive international travel history applied for and received a legitimate Canadian visa. The photo page of their Indian passport was then replaced with a doctored one and used by a different person. It's unclear how many people were involved in the scam, but Canadian immigration officials believe several dozen have slipped into the country with the fake Indian passports in the past year. "In some cases, the forgeries were extremely professional," said Raja Segran, Jet's vice-president for European operations. "In one case we weren't sure about one passport and asked a professional to look at it in Brussels. He said it looked genuine and the passenger carried on to Toronto, where it turned out that the passport was a forgery." Starting this week, Jet's employees in Brussels will receive training to ferret out fake documents, Segran said. Jet flights to Canada lay over in Belgium, with daily departures to Toronto. Passengers involved in the scam have applied for refugee status after their arrival in Toronto, and remain in Canada. Under Canadian immigration law, most people who arrive at a port of entry are entitled to make a claim for refugee status. Investigators involved in rooting out the scam said reservations for Canadian hotels were made over the Internet and a printout was produced to show border agents in Toronto. "The hotels were a good tipoff," one immigration investigator told the Star. "The reservations were all at hotels on the airport strip in Mississauga. "If you're spending all that money to travel around the world and come to Canada in November, why would you book a reservation for two weeks on the airport strip?" Border agents detected the first fake Indian passport they believe was connected to the scheme in February 2008. After a lull of activity, more fake passports began to show up in September and continued through December. Canadian officials say the fraud was crude enough that Jet reservation agents should have detected it. Legitimate Indian passports feature a line in microprinting that reads "Indian Passport Control" across the photo page. On some of the doctored passports, the line was little more than a smudge. Privacy laws have also made it hard to track scam organizers through credit cards. The only credit card information investigators have for those who booked the sham hotel rooms in Canada is the last four digits of a credit-card number. Hotel chains turned down a government request for help, citing privacy legislation, an investigator said. A Best Western spokesperson said a hotel in Mississauga "co-operated fully and promptly" with the Canada Border Services Agency's investigation. Investigators' attempts to contact original passport holders to whom the visas were granted have failed. "None of the contact numbers have worked," said one source. Even as authorities seem to have solved the problem with Jet, fraudsters are trying new tactics. Two weeks ago, a passenger with a fake Indian passport was stopped during a layover on a Toronto-bound Kuwait Airlines flight from Hyderabad, India, a source told the Star. Recently, police in the town of Moga, Punjab, arrested two brothers who ran a travel agency for allegedly making a pair of passports with different names for a woman who sought to travel to Canada, the Hindustan Times reported. It said Hakam Singh and Harmeet Singh are charged with cheating and forgery and are accused of preparing the passports for Kulwinder Kaur, a resident of a nearby village. Kaur paid a broker 10,000 rupees ($255) for the passports, the newspaper reported. Canadian authorities are considering adding biometric information to visas in an effort to head off attempts by fraudsters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fido Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 Wow, that sounds like a huge problem. "officials believe several dozen have slipped into the country " in the past year. An average of about two a month? one person every other week? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trader Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 Worse, they break the law to enter the country and then claim REFUGEE status!!!???? They should be deported immediately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deicer Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 Ties in with this thread... http://forum.aeforum.net/index.php?showtopic=387243 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon The Loon Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 One reason Jet had difficulty gaining a foothold in North America were its financial roots in Pakistan. Some agencies suggested the airline had "questionable investors". Perhaps we are seeing some of the consequences of those suspicions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoomerPete Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 One reason Jet had difficulty gaining a foothold in North America were its financial roots in Pakistan. Some agencies suggested the airline had "questionable investors". Perhaps we are seeing some of the consequences of those suspicions. Sorry Moon, To my knowledge there has never been an allegation regarding financial roots in Pakistan. There was speculation that Goyal's finances are tied into some elements of the Mumbai "mafia" but these rumours were ended (officially at least) by an investigation by the Indian Finance Ministry (I think) that the U.S. authorities demanded take place before landing rights were given to Jet. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon The Loon Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 No worries Pete. That was what we were told by our Air Sahara mandarins. Probably sour grapes. I guess AS is only a shadow of its former self today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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