UTTARADIT — Police are investigating 15 people, mostly foreigners, for allegedly falsifying or using national identification cards bearing the names of dead people.
Mr Sarawut Somsri, deputy chief of Ban Khok, filed a complaint with local police last month, seeking criminal action against five alleged Thais ID forgers and 11 foreign customers. The petition was filed after officials at a district registry office found a gang produced bogus iDs for 11 non-Thais two years ago by using names of deceased people that have not been cleared from civil-registration systems. Each forged document cost 200,000 baht.
The 16 individuals included 11 foreigners who received counterfeit Thai ID cards and five Thais, one of them a district official whose work does not involve civil registration. Other Thais included three living outside Ban Khok and a local monk who acted as a document endorser.
The Uttaradir provincial court issued arrest warrants for the 16 on July 15 on charges of reporting false information to government officials and applying for national IDs without citizenship using false evidence.
Mr Sarawut said the 11 foreigners were not staying or working in Ban Khok and the gang would change their names and addresses once they received the ID cards at Ban Khok, a remote district on the Thai-Lao border.
The dead people in their 30s whose personal records were used were from provinces across the country, including Uttaradit and Bangkok.
Zhang Yao Zhong, a 50-year-old Singaporean, was the first among the 16 to be arrested.
Mr Zhong, who works at JT Art Co located in the River City shopping complex in Bangkok, was apprehended at a border checkpoint in Chiang Rai last week while trying to cross into Myanmar.
Pol Col Pramuan Yimchan, chief of Ban Khok police station, said the Singaporean, carrying an ID card bearing the name of Santi Tiathanawong, said a Thai man and a woman told him they could help him get a Thai ID legally for 200,000 baht, but he had to do it at the Ban Khon district office.
The man received the document on May 16, 2013. He originally applied for the ID under the name of Somporn sae Lao and changed it to Santi once he got the card.
Mr Zhong, who has a Thai wife, claimed he discovered he had been duped by the couple after he was arrested. The address on his ID card belongs to a Buddhist temple in Ban Khok.
After questioning, the Singaporean was released on bail for 150,000 baht on condition that he could not travel abroad and his passport was kept by investigators, Pol Col Pramuan said.
He said police were trying to locate the other suspects. They were not able to identify the nationalities of the remaining 10 foreign suspects yet, the Ban Khok police chief said.