Equipment produced by forensic science experts Foster + Freeman led to the arrest of two men in the Czech Republic in January this year.
The men, Georgian nationals, had been trying to enter the Czech Republic from Turkey using Italian ID cards. Border control officers used the VSC4Plus, a system for examining security documents, and quickly discovered that the documents were fake.
The VSC4Plus can identify counterfeit documents in a matter of seconds. It can check for the majority of security features commonly used to prevent documents from being forged, such as watermarks, holograms, retro-reflective images, UV- activated features, anti-Stokes features, ICAO coded data, and invisibly embedded data.
It is equally effective on passports, visas, birth certificates, driving licences and many other ‘feeder’ documents offered to the authorities in support of applications for passports and ID cards.
Last year 250 cases like this were discovered in the Czech Republic alone, leading officials to believe that an organisation is selling Italian ID cards so that people can use them to travel freely in southern Europe.
Bob Freeman, founding partner of the company, said: “We are delighted to hear that our equipment is being used successfully.
"The VSC4Plus has been designed to provide a quick and easy method of examining a wide range of security documents and is the result of over 20 years’ of research and development by the company’s engineers. This case clearly demonstrates how effective the system can be.”
The Czech Republic was supplied with 12 VSC4plus devices for use at various regional airports in the country. These were only installed a few weeks before they had their first major success with the seizing of the false Italian identity documents and the resulting arrest of the Georgian nationals.
The two men were deported from the Czech Republic and banned from entering the country for three years. It is believed they paid about 10,000 Koruna (about £2,000) for the counterfeit Italian ID cards.
