British passports sold to migrants for just £500

Criminal gangs are selling genuine British passports for less than £500 to migrants in Europe, it can be revealed today. The price of a stolen passport has dropped dramatically from £2,000 a year ago, after more than 20,000 identity documents flooded on to the black market. It raises fears that Islamic State fanatics intent on committing terror attacks in the UK are finding it easier than ever to reach our shores. A senior police chief described the illicit trade as ‘one of the fastest growing problems’ in Europe.
Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, raised deep concerns that current border controls are unable to cope with ‘sophisticated counterfeit criminal syndicates’. He said terrorists were ‘exploiting’ the surge of migrants into Europe to move about undetected.
Meanwhile, two current UK Border Force officials warned that thousands of black market passports may have been used to enter Britain in the past year. The whistleblowers expressed grave concerns about our national security and suggested that ‘border security is non-existent’. And the Border Force admitted it had seized more than 6,500 illegal documents at passport control in the past three years. That figure is double the 3,000 passports seized during the three previous years.
The ease at which it is possible to obtain British passports on the black market in Europe was laid bare by an undercover investigator in Athens. For 500 euros – about £460 – he was offered a British passport, thought to have been stolen, of a man who has similar features to him. The smuggler suggested that Hashmet would have to alter his appearance and suggested he dyed his hair blond to look like the person featured on one of the passports he was trying to sell. He also told the investigator that he could replace the photo in one of the British passports for a picture of him for an extra 300 euros, which is £276.
This deal included advice on which airports in the UK have the lowest security and other tips on fooling British immigration officials.
Concerns over the supply of fake documents were laid bare by the EU’s border agency earlier this year. It said there were 11,000 migrants living in Europe with forged documents – a figure than has almost doubled in six months. Two current Border Force employees, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, told how the agency was struggling to catch all of those on illegal passports.