JOHOR BARU: A total of 43 people have been fined between RM1,000 and RM9,000 after pleading guilty to using fake identity cards and photocopies of others' identity cards.
The accused, comprising three Malaysians and 40 foreigners from Indonesia and the Philippines, pleaded guilty to the charges read to them separately before magistrates Nurzihan Abdul Rehman, A. Shaarmini and Atifah Hazimah Wahab and were sentenced.
According to the charge sheets, 35 of the accused were charged with using photocopies of identity cards belonging to others as their identification documents, while the remaining eight were charged with using fake identity cards.
They were accused of committing the offences at two separate factories in the Pasir Gudang Industrial Area and the MIEL Industrial Area in Pasir Gudang at about 10am and 8pm, respectively, two days ago.
All the accused were charged under Regulation 25(1)(e) of the National Registration Regulations 1990 (Amendment 2007), which carries a maximum jail term of three years, a fine of up to RM20,000, or both, upon conviction.
The courts also ordered all the accused, who are between 18 and 49, to serve jail terms of between one and six months if they failed to pay their respective fines.
The prosecution was conducted by National Registration Department (NRD) prosecuting officers Mohd Ramzi Adnan, Md Shahedan Md Taib and Noorleelawathi Man.
Ten of the accused were represented by lawyers, including Rashidah Baharom, Muhd Akmal Mazlan, Heng Wang Qianwei and Jackson Danial.
It was previously reported that the NRD had uncovered cases of foreign workers misusing identification documents belonging to others to secure employment during Ops Jejak 1.0 and Ops Jejak 2.0 at the factories.
