Three men jailed after investigators smashed 20-year global passport scam for criminals on the run

Three men who ran a bespoke global passport service for top criminals on the run have been jailed after investigators smashed their 20-year operation.

The documents were genuine, but fraudulently obtained from lookalike individuals who resembled Most Wanted murderers, gun smugglers and drug traffickers.

The gang simply removed the true passport holder’s photograph and replaced it with a picture of the fugitive.

Anthony Beard, 61, supplied 108 UK passports by targeting vulnerable individuals with drug and alcohol problems he had met at rehab centres and homeless shelters during his own struggles with addiction.

He chose people whose passports were running out because unlike fresh applications, renewals do not require an in-person interview. He was jailed for six years and eight months.

Investigators from the UK’s National Crime Agency secretly filmed Beard meeting passport holders and persuading them to co-operate in the scam.

They also recorded him calling the Passport Office, chasing up applications in a number of voices and aliases.

Christopher Zietek, 67, was a go-between who collected the passports from Beard and supplied them to the notorious Adams family, a North London crime group, who then sold them to the desperate fugitives. He was jailed for eight years.

Stephen Lawrence suspect among customers

The gang’s customers, who paid up to £15,000 for a passport, included cannabis supplier Jamie Acourt. He was one of the original Stephen Lawrence murder suspects and spent two years on the run in Spain.

Acourt, 47, was arrested after Mr Lawrence’s death in Eltham, south east London, in 1993, but has always denied being involved.

Beard was seen meeting an accomplice of Acourt, who investigators followed and led them to discover him hiding in Spain under a false name.

Acourt, from southeast London, was arrested on a European arrest warrant outside a gym in Barcelona in 2018. He was extradited to the UK and jailed for nine years for masterminding a two-year conspiracy to sell cannabis resin.

Among the other customers were Glasgow murderers Jordan Owen and Christopher Hughes, Liverpool drug trafficker Michael Moogan, Manchester fugitive David Walley and suspected Scottish drug trafficker Barrie Gillespie.

Even when Hughes and accused gangland leader Gillespie were arrested after a bar fight in Portugal their real identities did not come to light.

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Alan Thompson, 72, was Zietek’s gofer, driving him to meetings with villains and transporting the passports. He was locked up for three years.

The NCA swooped on the gang, arresting a total of 24 suspects in raids in London, Kent, Essex and Merseyside, two years ago.

They were held on a variety of crimes including making and receiving false passports, counter-signing false passports and perverting the course of justice.

Beard pleaded guilty, while Zietek and Thompson denied the charges, but were found guilty by the jury at Reading Crown Court. Some 74 other offences relating to fraudulent passports were taken into consideration by the judge.

Turned to crime because they were bored

Defending the trio, their lawyers said they had been driven to crime by boredom and old age.

Craig Rush, for Thompson, said he had been forced to retire on medical grounds in 1999, and by 2017 was so bored that he turned to crime.

Describing Thompson meeting Zietek, he said: “These days from 1999 to 2017 or 18 watching Homes Under The Hammer, daytime TV, totally bogged down in a world of ennui and boredom, were lightened by a man who could spin an interesting story.”

Thompson had become a gofer for Zietek “not for money but because it gave him something to do”, Mr Rush told the court.

Sentencing the three men, deputy circuit judge Nicholas Ainley said the scheme “enabled very wicked, sophisticated, violent criminals to escape justice”.

“Of course these passports are going to work because they’re genuine,” he added.

“They will pass any security test that any border official tends to throw their way. Thus it can be seen that this particular type of fraud subverts the whole system of passport issuing.”

A Home Office spokesperson said the NCA worked with the passport office to secure the convictions, but did not comment on how the defendants were able to exploit the system.

“This sentence demonstrates the government’s commitment to tackle and dismantle these despicable criminal gangs who seek to exploit and threaten public safety for profit,” they said.

NCA deputy director Craig Turner added: “The investigation demonstrates the NCA’s unique role in tackling the most serious and complex crime threats facing the UK.

“We have identified a chronic, under the radar conspiracy that enabled drug and firearm traffickers, murderers and fugitives to evade justice, and we have worked across borders to dismantle it and the bring the masterminds to account.”