Four arrested over forgery scam

The four suspects were based in Bangkok’s Pratunam area and ran an Indian restaurant as a front, senior DSI official Pol Colonel Songsak Raksaksakul said. The four people also ran a racket in which they either forged passports or bought stolen passports and resold them to other rings operating in Thailand and elsewhere, he said. 

Restaurant owner Shahzad Nazeer Butt, 45, has been charged with running a restricted business without permission, buying or possessing stolen items, and forging and selling forged documents, while Khawaja Rizwan Haleem, 32, was charged with document forgery and sale of forged documents. Orawan Nazeer, 37, the wife of Nazeer Butt, and Nongrak Wongsri, 45, have been charged with conspiring. 

In a raid of the restaurant later, DSI officials allegedly found the information pages of passports from 42 countries, pictures of a large number of relevant documents in smartphones, several authentic Austrian passports, authentic information pages of Italian passports and blank Indian visa stickers.