Police crack fake visa ring

POLICE suspect a Nicosia taxi driver to be the mastermind behind a ring selling fake work visas to southeast Asian nationals.

On Monday police arrested and detained two Vietnamese women on suspicion of circulating and selling fake entry visas.

According to investigators, the two women, Thi Lan Tran and Huong Tran Li, were arrested after another woman was stopped by police and searched.

Police found fake visas, which the third woman was preparing to send to Vietnam.

She later told police that she didn’t know the visas were phoney and she was soon released without being charged.

Tran and Li later confessed to working with a 35-year-old taxi driver in Nicosia who would make them fake visas for a fee of $1,000 each.

The two women would then charge more than double that amount to Vietnamese people and then send them by post.

The 35-year-old man was arrested on Monday night

Yesterday, the case investigator told a Nicosia Court that a search of the suspect’s car revealed 33 fake working visas, a scissor, tip-ex, paperclips as well as several photocopies of Vietnamese women’s passports, a block of receipts and different pieces of paper with names, addresses, dates and numbers on them.

According to the investigator, the taxi driver has earned around $80,000 from the scams, adding that all the money was recently given to a casino owner in the north who he owed money to.
He also confessed to selling fake visas to people in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, police are set to ask for assistance from Interpol to help locate the individuals in possession of the fake visas.

Yesterday, Nicosia Judge Michalis Ambizas remanded the suspect in police custody for eight days.
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