Cops arrest NRD officer and 20 others; bust fake ID syndicate

PETALING JAYA: The police have busted a syndicate specialising in creating fraudulent identification papers after arresting several members, including an officer from the National Registration Department (NRD).

Bukit Aman CID director Comm Datuk Huzir Mohamed, in a statement on Wednesday (Sept 11), said that the arrests were made in a series of simultaneous raids on Aug 19 by a combined team from Bukit Aman and Penang state police.

Twenty individuals were arrested, aged between 32 to 70 years old, under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants (Amended) Act 2010.

"The syndicate was believed to had sought after foreigners who wanted citizenship. A syndicate member from the Penang NRD would then handle the creation of invalid birth certificates and ICs.

“This individual will then instruct other NRD staff, who were not aware of the illegal nature of the instructions, to key in the records of the invalid cards into the system. It is believed that the syndicate earned around RM100,000 to RM600,000, depending on the nature of the request, ” he said.

He said that the raids were a follow-up to a prior investigation on a case earlier in the year, when a Chinese national was caught by the Immigration department for having what they believed to be fraudulent identification documents.

He added that all 20 suspects have been remanded under Sosma act 2012, and that the investigation papers have been referred back to the DPP office on Sept 10.

“Investigations are ongoing to identify other syndicate members, ” he said.