Officers discovered two wardrobes containing over 1,800 counterfeit passports- 212 of them British- with a street value of over a million pounds.
Detectives from the Economic and Specialist Crime Command’s Operation Maxim made the arrests in what the Metropolitan Police have described as an intelligence-led operation.
Three men, one Kosovan and two Bulgarian, were arrested at the address for conspiracy to manufacture identity documents and remain in custody at a North London police station.
Following the search, two further men were arrested. An Albanian man was arrested in Grantham Road, Goodmayes, Essex and the other was a Bulgarian man arrested at a property in Ballards Lane in Finchley. Both remain in custody.
Detective Inspector Nick Downing, from the Met’s Economic and Specialist Crime Command, said:
“Our activity has not only disrupted a well established and organised criminal network, but as a result it will make London safer. We will continue to target and disrupt organised crime networks across the capital seeking to use false documents to facilitate their criminal enterprise. We do this by working closely with our partners from Border and Immigration Agency and Identity Passport Service.”
He continued, “These counterfeit passports have the potential to be sold on to anyone wanting to carry out criminal activity or illegally enter the UK. They are sold on recklessly by those producing them without any regard to who they might be or why they might wish to avoid detection. As part of the Economic and Specialist Crime Command, we will use the powers of the Proceeds of Crime Act to recover their assets and maximise this disruption.”
A statement from the Metropolitan Police said that British passports are usually considered too hard to accurately replicate by counterfeiters.
