M'SIA STAGING POINT FOR `IMPOSTOR FRAUD' - COURT

By Neville DCruz

MELBOURNE, March 17 (Bernama) -- 'Snakeheads' (underground lingo for those
involved in human trafficking) had used Malaysia as a base for imposter fraud to
send clients into Australia.

Impostor fraud was an increasing global alternative to altering travel
documents and involved a genuine passport holder falsely reporting its loss or
theft to their embassy overseas.

According to the Age newspaper, a senior investigator with Australia's
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Melbourne passport office told the
Melbourne Magistrate's Court that the holder delayed the report until the
impostor had left for their destination.

Barry Grahame said Malaysia was used as a staging point for
"people-smuggling
by air" because many clients of the smugglers could enter the country without
visas.

Grahame told a bail hearing for an 18-year-old Somali man on Friday that the
most common method for such frauds was a conspiracy between the passport holder
and the impostor.

The arrest of the man, who cannot be named, follows a call last month in
Federal Parliament for the Rudd Government to act on the Somali-Malaysia link
to Australia, The Age newspaper said.

An Opposition Liberal MP Jason Wood, in a speech on Feb 23 on identity
crimes, said certain people of Somali descent in Malaysia "miraculously lose
their Australian passports and then a similar-looking person gets possession of
their passport.

"The person who now has the stolen passport arrives back in Australia and
gets through Customs," said Wood, who also revealed there were at least seven
other similar cases.

"The (Australian) Government needs to look very closely at this because of
the obvious strong links to al-Qaeda and some people in Somalia," he said.

Authorities are searching for those involved in similar cases, including
some possibly being harboured in Melbourne's Somali community.

The teenager has been held as an unlawful non-citizen in the Maribyrnong
Immigration Detention Centre since investigators found him in the suburb of
Reservoir on Feb 19.

-- BERNAMA