Trio jailed after investigators smashed 20-year global passport scam

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, is thought to have supplied hundreds of passports, targeting vulnerable individuals whose documents were running out and persuading them to let him apply for replacements. 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.

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

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

Acourt, 47, 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.

Acourt was arrested after a gang of white men attacked 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence in Eltham in 1993, but he has denied being involved in the stabbing.

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 twenty-four 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.

At the time the NCA’s Deputy Director of Investigations Chris Farrimond explained why the supply of genuine, but fraudulently-obtained passports was so valuable to the fugitives: “If a criminal steals a passport or buys a stolen one, they’ve always got the concern that’s it’s been reported and every time they go through a passport check or gate they’re taking a risk.

“This reduces the risk considerably because it’s a genuine item. It should get them through, no problem.”

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Beard pleaded guilty, Zietek and Thompson denied the charges but were found guilty by the jury at Reading Crown Court.

The investigation into the gang also led to the arrest of Stephen Lawrence suspect Jamie Acourt, who was on the run in Spain.

NCA Deputy Director Craig Turner said: “This organised crime group supplied fraudulent passports that enabled some of the UK’s most serious and dangerous criminals to operate internationally under false identities and pose a sustained threat to the public.

“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.

“The NCA continues to protect the UK from the serious and organised criminals who present a threat to our security, people and economy.”

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