WIREDGOV

This is the bedroom in a north London flat where thousands of counterfeit identity documents were made to be sold on the black market.

Arsene Meci, 26, an Albanian national, manufactured fake driving licences, national identity cards, passports and construction and security certification cards at his home in Western Road, East Finchley.

These were then sold by broker Medi Krasniqi, 47, a British national of Albanian descent living in Corbyn Street, Finsbury Park.

They charged clients between £80 and £500 for made-to-order documents, depending on what was required.

Krasniqi was in charge of locating clients, gathering photos and personal details which he would then pass on to Meci. Once the cards were made they would meet and carry out handovers of completed documents in shops and cafes in the Turnpike Lane area of north London.

But their activities were being watched by National Crime Agency officers and it was after one such handover that investigators stepped in and arrested the pair.

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On arrest Krasniqi had around 70 counterfeit cards in his possession. A search of a property linked to him also led to the seizure of around £12,000 cash, much of which had been hidden behind an oven.

At Meci’s flat NCA officers discovered a forgery factory; computers, laminators and professional printing equipment, along with a number of photos, blank cards and fake passports ready to be made up.

Examination of the computers revealed they contained more than eight thousand images and templates for driving licences, identity card, passport and cards entitling the bearer to work in the construction and security industries.

Both men pleaded guilty to conspiring to produce false identity documents, possession of false ID and money laundering charges at Chelmsford Crown Court on Monday 15 December. They will be sentenced on Monday 12 January.

Carl Eade, senior investigating officer from the NCA, said:

“Krasniqi and Meci really were the ‘go-to’ men for anyone who wanted any form of false ID anywhere in north London. Their clients included criminals and people in the UK illegally.

“The thousands of passports, identity cards and other documents they were creating and selling were then used to help people obtain work or services they weren’t entitled to.

“Worryingly there is a safety element here too – one of the forms of ID they specialised in was certification to work in the construction industry. We have no way of knowing whether their clients were actually qualified to do the jobs they were then able to apply for.”

The men are the final two members of a wider north-London based forgery network to be convicted.

A three-year investigation into a series of Albanian-led cells dealing in false documentation had previously led to 15 convictions and more than 56 years of jail sentences being handed out.

During the course of the investigation more than three hundred fake passports and two hundred counterfeit national identity cards have been seized, along with databases containing thousands of images of fake documents and images of around 20,000 individuals.