The rise and fall of a camouflage passport provider

daimlersix · Insider Anmeldungsdatum: 22.03.2004 Beiträge: 688

Monday, December 15, 1997

Need a secret citizenship identity? Woman creates passports to now-extinct countries

HOUSTON (AP) - Travelers who need a little citizenship camouflage call Donna Walker.

Thinking that most terrorists aren't geography scholars, Ms. Walker created her International Documents Service 10 years ago with an eye toward creating passports that allow Americans to hide their nationality. The trick? Ms. Walker's passports list countries that are extinct.

"You're sitting ... minding your own business and then you're totally disrupted," Ms. Walker explains. "Totally out of control. So I thought a good passport to hand over would be a good idea."

She says she got the idea after reading stories about Americans being singled out by hijackers. So she checked with some of the world's countries that recently changed their names and found that no one holds ownership over the former name.

For $215, customers can purchase real-looking passports with the names of these former countries: Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) or British Honduras (now Belize). Ms. Walker says she sells 400 of her "camouflage" passports every year. .

Any alternative passport, she reasoned, had to be both convincing and legal. Ms. Walker began wondering who owned the old names of countries that renamed themselves.

Ceylon, which changed its name to Sri Lanka when it became a republic in 1972, came to mind.

"I called the Sri Lankan Embassy in Washington, D.C., to see if they had any jurisdiction over their former name," Walker says.

They didn't.

She then asked the State Department about her plan.

"They said, 'Of course it's not legal,' " Ms. Walker says. "I said, 'Tell me where it says that.' They said they'd get back to me. They never did.' "

Unless the passports are used to break a law, they are considered "without value," the Houston Chronicle reported Sunday.

So apparently without fallout, a client can buy a serious-looking document claiming citizenship in places like New Hebrides, which is now called Vanuatu.

There are about eight other nationalities possible, but Ms. Walker won't divulge them unless you don't buy a passport.

Occasionally, she makes up nations from whole cloth. But she takes pains to make them seem real, like the one she names Sinnebar.

"It's a small country in the Indian Ocean," Ms. Walker gushes. "It has national health care, 90-percent literacy, and is famous for Sinnebar tea. It's where cinnamon was originally discovered. When Captain John Driscoll discovered it, he didn't want cinnamon equated with sin, so he changed the spelling.

Her clientele also has changed, Ms. Walker says. In her boom years, the late 1980s, clients mostly wanted passports to evade hijackers.

But since the Berlin Wall fell, Walker says, her biggest clients are Germans, wanting to avoid lingering resentment when they travel in Europe. Most of her clients, she adds, are businessmen.

daimlersix · Insider Anmeldungsdatum: 22.03.2004 Beiträge: 688

Investigators: Feds Offered Phony Passports

Terrorism Task Force Looking Into Case

POSTED: 3:13 p.m. CST February 1, 2002
UPDATED: 10:38 a.m. CST February 2, 2002
HOUSTON -- Federal agents cracked down on a company selling phony passports over the Internet, according to an exclusive News2Houston investigation.
All kinds of safeguards are in place for anyone getting a real passport, making sure the pictures really match the person whose name is listed.
Workers in an office are busy handling request from all over the Houston area. They have to make sure the applicants are really entitled to a passport.
But there's a massive demand out there from those who are not eligible for real ones, so they search for counterfeits.
"The problem becomes they can utilize that document to obtain other legitimate documents, all from that one fraudulent document itself," U.S. State Department agent Mark Bandik said.
Bandik said that means that a terrorist, or a con-artist can get birth certificates or drivers' licenses to commit crimes in someone else's name.
"They end up being John Does or Jane Does because no one knows who they are, whether they're a U.S. citizen or from another nation," Bandik said.
U.S. Customs agents are now going after an outfit they found on the Internet. It's called International Document Services.
In a search warrant obtained by News2Houston, the Web site bragged about its fake passports being used by criminals to escape U.S. law enforcement, and travel internationally.
An undercover agent set up a meeting, provided a picture of a Middle Eastern male and requested a passport in the name of Riadh Al Tariq.
Two weeks later, the agent said that he arrived at a Montrose-area home, and Daniel Jay Schacht was accused of handing over a passport in that name, as promised, for $240.
The man who provided the passport to federal agents told them all of the phony passports were made at a business owned by Donna Walker.
Agents said that Walker showed them a box of blank passports from several countries, but claims she's sick and didn't have much to say to News2Houston's Investigator Stephen Dean
"No, it's not. It's all been handled," Walker said. " I don't want to infect you. Sorry."
Dean asked, "I want to ask you, make sure you have a chance to say something here. They're accusing you of some serious crimes here."
Walker replied, "Yeah, well. No. It's all handled. Thank you very much."
From inside her business, court records showed that agents confiscated 1,075 blank passports, nine rubber stamps for visas and entry into the country, and documents detailing the sale of forged passports.
The Justice Department's terrorism task force is now looking closely at this case because of the fear of terrorists using fake documents like this.
Customs agents wouldn't comment and the U.S. attorney's office wouldn't say when this case will go to a grand jury for indictments in this case. If charges are filed, it could yield several years in prison.

Copyright 2003 by Click2Houston.com.