Probe exposes fraudulent ID trade

By Richard Bilton BBC News

Fraud experts said the documents looked authentic

Four people have been arrested in Kent on suspicion of selling fake documents for use in identity fraud.

The arrests followed an investigation by the Metropolitan Police into a website.

For the last three months, the website has also been the subject of a BBC investigation.

BBC journalists joined the site and infiltrated its members. We found a wide variety of fake documents offered for sale, from credit card bills and bank statements to payslips and mortgage statements.

The site's disclaimers said these documents were for novelty purposes only. But could these fake documents really be good enough to commit fraud?

'Opportunities are endless'

To find out, we ordered a selection of documents including a bank statement, a gas bill, and even a driving licence.

We wanted to show how anybody could be at risk from identity theft. So we ordered our documents in the name of the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

Three weeks later, and our documents arrived, sent to an anonymous mailbox we had set up in west London. The exceptional quality of these fakes shocked industry experts.

"These are very, very good," said Danny Harrison, a fraud expert with Card Protection Plan.

"You could use these documents to either take out credit cards, loans, car leasing or mobile phone contracts. The opportunities with this kind of information are endless."

So what does this mean for identity cards, due to be introduced in the UK in the coming years?

'Open to abuse'

For the government, the ease with which we had obtained our documents illustrated exactly why an identity card scheme was needed. We took our documents to home office minister Meg Hillier.

"People will always try to create forgeries. We need to make sure that we secure peoples' identities," she said.

"And one of the benefits of the national identity card scheme is that there will be a very high level of check for people to get an identity card, which will obviate the need for all these different pieces of paper to prove people's identity.

"So it is a good argument for why we need a national identity card scheme with extra security built in."

The more we rely on official documents, the more there are to forge Guy Herbert No2ID

The new ID cards will, it is true, be much harder to forge than a bank statement, or even a driving licence. They will include unique fingerprint information and facial scans.

But opponents of the scheme say the new cards will be another form of identification open to abuse by criminals.

And placing trust in a single document, some say, will actually make life easier for criminals - because only one document needs to be forged.

"Well, obviously this is worrying," said Guy Herbert of the campaign group No2ID.

"For ID cards that just shows what will start to happen with an ID card system. The more we rely on official documents, the more there are to forge."

Whatever the conclusions about identity cards, the ease with which we were able to buy these fakes shows just what a big business identity theft has become.

The credit reference company Experian has published figures showing that identity fraud had leapt by 66% during the last year.

More than 6,000 victims contacted the firm last year, compared with 3,500 the year before.

And while one website may now have been closed down, industry experts warn that others will soon replace it.

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