Criminal networks are busier than ever faking, forging and doctoring travel documents, identity pape...

1. Experts Meet in Paris to Tackle Growing Document Fraud
Criminal networks are busier than ever faking, forging and doctoring travel documents, identity
papers, drivers' licenses and social security cards, authorities say.
Experts in document and identity fraud from Europe, the U.S., Canada and other countries were
holding a closed-door meeting Thursday in Paris to share expertise and find ways to best use
improving technology to crack the networks of increasingly sophisticated fraudsters.
Agents from Europol and Frontex, Europe's
police and border patrol agencies, and
representatives of high-tech companies were
among the 180 police, immigration specialists
and other experts at the daylong meeting.
Document and identity paper fraud fuels the
movement of migrants across borders and
spawns social welfare scams. It also leaves
migrants vulnerable to traffickers and crime
groups for years.
"Document fraud is an extraordinary vector that
gives access to all aspects of crime," said Jean-
Michel Brevet of the French Border Police's
Documents Fraud Office.
Almost half of the 226 networks of illegal immigration dismantled in France last year centered on
fake documents, he said.
In a case cracked last year by French police, an Iraqi-Kurdish network sent people from Mosul, Iraq -
- a city recently taken over by Islamic State extremists -- to Istanbul, then Sao Paulo, Brazil, then to
the Brazilian town of Belem and on to Cayenne in French Guiana.
"From there, they had the possibility of going either to
Orly (an airport outside Paris) or to Frankfurt," Brevet
said, adding that migrants had to pay $10,000 for the false
documents and $5,000 more for the trip.
Technological improvements to make documents harder to
tamper with have proven to be a double-edged sword,
according to false documents police expert Laurent

2. Gauthier. Technology also "facilitates the work of
fraudsters" who can, for example, easily procure high-resolution inkjet printers that make it "much
more difficult to detect false documents with a quick look."
"It's always a race against time," Gauthier said.
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