U.S. Sting Busts Major Human Trafficking Operations

Email

Print

Share

April 26, 2007 1:52 PM

An undercover sting operation called "Triple-X" has cracked a thriving network of Southeast Asian crime rings that trafficked in women and children and produced professional-grade counterfeit travel documents to smuggle their human cargo and other aliens into the United States, ABC News has learned.

The sting operation was run by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and focused on the busy port city of Surabaya, Indonesia, which has emerged as a gateway for illegal travel into the United States.

The operation began in February 2005 and has since broken up 12 major criminal groups operating out of the busy port city.

According to Gary Gibson, Diplomatic Security's assistant director for International Programs, Triple X was one of the largest and most successful anti-counterfeiting operations in U.S. history.

Investigations by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security have led to 21 raids by the Indonesian National Police, which netted 84 arrests. According to the State Department, at least one Indonesian immigration official was arrested for aiding the criminals. All of those arrested were charged, tried and convicted under Indonesian fraud law.

Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.

"To have this number of fraudulent cases run through the system is probably unprecedented," Gibson told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

The State Department says more than 4,800 fraudulent documents were recovered as evidence during the raids. Those fabricated documents included U.S. visas and passports, fake identification cards, Indonesian passports and other false records.

Based on the evidence seized in the raids, including computers and other records, Diplomatic Security was able to identify more than 8,000 individuals who used these fraudulent document services and was able to determine that 100 individuals successfully entered the United States using fake documentation obtained from the Surabaya counterfeiting rings.

Gibson said that all of those individuals were apprehended, including one individual who attempted to smuggle automatic weapons into southern California. That individual was stopped before he could do anything, Gibson said.

Surabaya is known as a major transit point in east Asia for those who wish to travel to the United States, Australia and other developed countries. Because of this, the State Department considers Surabaya a "high fraud post," where visa applications are vigorously screened for fraudulent documents.

According to Gibson, operation Triple X began when some of the U.S. embassy's consular staff began to question the authenticity of some of the documents that were received on visa applications. Those documents were then passed on to the U.S. embassy's security officers who went through the visa application records and found a consistently suspicious pattern of a specific type of documentation. Those documents were able to be traced to crime syndicates in the city.

With the help of the Indonesian authorities an investigation was launched, and the counterfeiting rings were eventually shut down.

Despite the success of operation Triple X, the problem of counterfeiting documents is one that will not be getting any easier for the United States government.

"These groups are far more advanced than we are at counterfeiting documents," Gibson told ABC News.

The premier manufacturers of high quality printers capable of producing nearly indistinguishable fraudulent documents are located in east Asia, he said.

"It's easy to get them from China, Japan or South Korea for fairly legit purposes and then turn them around" for illegal uses, Gibson added.

According to Gibson the long-term success of Triple X may be the operational cooperation between Diplomatic Security and the Indonesian authorities. He said that relationship has led to new leads that have uncovered new types of document fraud.

Picture Courtesy of U.S. State Department's Visa and Passport Security Strategic Plan.