A Taiwanese travel agency official and a Thai man were arrested in Taipei on Wednesday in connection with a passport-forgery case, the Taoyuan Prosecutors' Office said yesterday.
Taoyuan Prosecutor Chang Chun-hui, working with the Aviation Police Bureau, arrested Chen Mei-yu (
A passport-forgery ring operating out of Thailand is suspected of having collaborated with Chen in obtaining passports from cash-strapped Taiwanese college students for use by Thais wanting to illegally enter the US, Canada or Japan.
Police said students from Ming Chuan University and Aletheia University in Taipei are suspected of being involved in the cash-for-passport scheme.
Initial investigations show that the ring tampered with the passports of at least 20 Taiwanese students.
Police are questioning those students but say the number of students involved may rise.
The police said that last year they tracked a Thai citizen who had used a forged ROC passport to go to Japan. That case led them to a woman who could not pay a NT$600,000 (US$17,142) credit-card debt and had asked a college student, surnamed Shen, to sell her passport to the ring.
Police discovered that Chen and Shen are both students at the same college. The pair allegedly targeted other students who could no longer pay their credit-card debts and persuade them to hand over their personal information and documents for money.
Some of the students allegedly reported their passports as lost and had applied for new ones in order to hand them over for money.
Police said that the students were unaware that such actions could affect their right to travel abroad and even lead to them being barred from leaving the country.
Police said more than NT$43 million had been deposited into Chotiphatn Contai's bank account between 2001 and last month, indicating that the passport scheme may have been operating for some time.
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