An Iranian national, detained on Monday for allegedly running a transnational passport forgery syndicate, had been able to hide his identity until he made a phone call to order pizza.
Police investigators admitted Wednesday it was an uphill battle to locate Hamid Reza Jafary, wanted in many countries. But a clue gained from the phone call led officers to his hideout and the largest crackdown in recent years of a criminal group possibly supplying terrorist suspects.
Calling Mr Jafary "The Doctor", Immigration Bureau chief Pol Lt Gen Nathathorn Prousoontorn told the Bangkok Post the investigation team spent months analysing phone numbers linked to Mr Jafary to little avail. He added that investigators probably would have given up hope if they had not found a link between the suspect and the pizza order.
The link was central to the work of the officers who began to gather information on the gang after the arrest of people using fake passports, he said. They wanted to know how these passports were linked to the forgers.
They checked the phone records of the passport holders, hoping they would discover a link to Mr Jafary.
Nathathorn: Probe was uphill battle
Locating his hideout or uncovering his identity through other methods proved challenging, though he had been reportedly living in Thailand for some time.
Almost nobody really knew his true identity, Pol Lt Gen Nathathorn said. The suspect carried five fake passports -- three Brazilian passports and a Portuguese and a New Zealand passport. Mr Jafary was good at using his forgery skills to disguise himself.
According to the investigation, Mr Jafary lived in a house in Chachoengsao's Muang district. On its first floor, he ran a business selling second-hand computers as a front for his racket on the second floor which housed his passport forgery office with all the equipment he needed to make fake passports, including a device to write patterns on passports with lasers.
The computer store made his illicit activities blend with his illicit business, Pol Lt Gen Nathathorn said, explaining the nobody could not guess what Mr Jafary did except sell old computers.
When he needed to meet his friends, he would make appointments elsewhere. His other location was in DD House in the Nong Chok area of Bangkok. He was cautious about his whereabouts.
The police found it difficult to arrest him while he was delivering fake passports to his customers. "He did not simply hand a passport to his customer," Pol Lt Gen Nathathorn said. "He usually hid it inside the cover of a diary he gave to the customer.''
However, the investigation team eventually found the most crucial link after arresting a person who bought a fake passport from Mr Jafary. He claimed he had once seen Mr Jafary and provided police with description.
The investigators then checked the person's phone and found a number believed to belong to Mr Jafary.
"Officers found the caller used it [the phone] to order pizza" from a store with a delivery service, Pol Lt Gen Nathathorn said. "Police know his hideout from this information," he said.
Pol Lt Gen Nathathorn said the arrest of Mr Jafary, along with five Pakistani suspects, could relieve worries over terrorism as, according to the investigation, most of the fake passports were sold to customers from the Middle East for trips to Europe and Australia.