AUSTRALIA PROBING IMPOSTER FRAUD TO SMUGGLE PEOPLE TO COUNTRY

MELBOURNE, March 17 (NNN-BERNAMA) -- 'Snakeheads', underground slang for those involved in human trafficking, have been using Malaysia as a base for impostor fraud to send clients into Australia.Impostor fraud is an increasing global alternative to altering travel documents and involves a genuine passport holder falsely reporting its loss or theft to their embassy overseas.According to The Age newspaper, a senior investigator with Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Melbourne passport office has told the Melbourne Magistrate's Court that the holders delayed making the reports until the impostors had left for their destination.Barry Grahame said Malaysia was used as a staging point for "people-smuggling by air" because many clients of the smugglers could enter Malaysia country without visas.Grahame told a bail hearing for an 18-year-old Somali man on Friday that the most common method for such frauds was a conspiracy between the passport holder and the impostor.The arrest of the Somali man, who cannot be named, follows a call last month in the Federal Parliament for the government to act on the Somali-Malaysia link to Australia, The Age newspaper said.Opposition Liberal MP Jason Wood, in a speech on Feb 23 on identity crimes, said certain people of Somali descent in Malaysia "miraculously lose their Australian passports and then a similar-looking person gets possession of their passport"."The person who now has the stolen passport arrives back in Australia and gets through Customs," said Wood, who also revealed there were at least seven other similar cases."The (Australian) Government needs to look very closely at this because of the obvious strong links to al-Qaeda and some people in Somalia," he said...more..http://www.namnewsnetwork.org/v2/read.php?id=76941