Five men arrested in massive ID forgery case

Five men, aged 23 to 46, were arrested in Chisinau on charges of forging identity documents on a large scale and of influence peddling. The investigation into this case started after a person admitted that he had paid the group 110 euros to get a new-type driver's license. The suspects claimed that they could influence an official at the Information Ministry to “arrange everything”. A search at a Chisinau apartment revealed top-of-the-line equipment, raw materials, holograms, matrices and other stuff that the group used to forge identity papers which were so well executed that they could pass as real in all the EU countries. In fact, when an undercover officer asked the counterfeiters for a Romanian identity card, they produced it within 20 minutes, and indistinguishable from the real thing, too. The search also revealed a fake driver's license for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, which one of the suspects said he wanted to make a gift to a friend. The price for a fake document ranged from 110 euros for a Moldovan driver's license to several thousand for a foreign passport, including Italian, Spanish and Romanian, 30 pieces of which were also found during the search. To sound plausible, the suspects pretended that they had contacts at the Information Ministry, the body responsible for identity documents. Now the suspects are held in the remand facility of the Anticorruption Center, with Anticorruption prosecutors handling the case.