Ruthless snakehead people-smugglers are trying to portray a softer image to fool guards at border checkpoints and airports.
They are posing with female clients as honeymoon couples, Hong Kong immigration officials revealed.
To back up their claims, the couples wear wedding rings and even carry fake photos of them looking lovingly into each other's eyes as they share a drink.
In a case in Hong Kong last year, a young snakehead pretended to be the husband of a female client using a fake Singaporean passport. They were intending to travel to New York after a honeymoon in Hong Kong and even had a photograph album full of pictures of their romantic time together in the city.
But after they were pulled over for a check, it emerged that the female's passport was fake. Later, it was revealed she paid the snakeheads at least HK$100,000 to be smuggled into the United States.
Asked how the bogus couple were spotted, Tse Tak-hung, chief immigration assistant at the Anti-Illegal Migration Agency, said: 'They acted too intimately at the boarding gates area and leaned on each other in a strange way.'