Overstaying foreigner caught with fake PH passport
Credit to Author: BENJIE VERGARA, TMT| Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2019 03:44:01 +0000
A MALAYSIAN who overstayed for six months in the country was caught using a bogus Philippine passport at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said on Tuesday.
Toong Yuen Chin, 36, tried to leave the country for Kuala Lumpur via Air Asia flight but was questioned by immigration officer who became suspicious when the foreigner presented a Philippine passport, which could not be encoded by the passport reader.
Medina said that Chin’s Filipino name in the passport was Jacky Cruz Chin.
The foreigner, during secondary inspection, confessed that he was a Malaysian and admitted that a fixer identified only as Lawrence facilitated his acquisition of a fraudulent Philippine passport for a fee.
“We will detain him in compliance with Commissioner Jaime Morente’s directive that all alien travelers caught using spurious documents be prosecuted for violating our immigration laws,” Medina said.
The passenger was brought to the BI Detention Center in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City where he remains confined while undergoing deportation proceedings.
According to senior immigration officer Glen Comia, who heads the BI travel control and enforcement unit at NAIA 3, Chin’s last arrival in the country was on July 12, 2018 using his Malaysian passport.
“Apparently, he used the fake Philippine passport to evade payment of immigration fees and fines for overstaying in the country,” Comia said.
The Malaysian reportedly carried a Philhealth ID and a municipal birth certificate purportedly showing he was born in Sta. Ana, Manila to Filipino parents.
Anti-fraud examiners at the BI-NAIA, however, found that the biographical page of the passenger’s Philippine passport was counterfeit, which explains why it could not be read by the immigration officer’s passport scanner.
The post Overstaying foreigner caught with fake PH passport appeared first on The Manila Times Online.