Illegal jobs scam uncovered in joint swoop on fake ID syndicate
The Immigration Department and mainland authorities, in the first case of its kind, have cracked a syndicate that arranged for mainlanders to enter Hong Kong with legitimate travel documents then provided them with fake identity cards and helped them find work in local restaurants.
At least 57 people were arrested in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and elsewhere in Guangdong on Tuesday night in an operation codenamed 'Forestrike'. During the swoop, 11 core syndicate members - all from northeast China - were arrested in Guangdong. The gang was thought to have operated for at least six months, the department's assistant director Corrado Chow said.
It recruited people in northeast China and took them to Shenzhen, before arranging for them to come to Hong Kong as tourists. Then it gave them forged ID cards made in Shenzhen to cover up their visitor status and help them get jobs in Hong Kong restaurants.
'Each of them would have paid about 20,000 yuan [HK$23,150] for the one-stop service,' Chow said. 'Preliminary estimations indicated the syndicate raked in up to 3 million yuan from the illicit business ... and arranged for about 100 people to work in Hong Kong.'
Chow said mainland enforcers found 11 card-manufacturing workshops in Shenzhen from which they seized about 200 forged Hong Kong identity cards and home return permits, as well as equipment including computers, printers, scanners, a die-cutting machine and a laminating machine. He said syndicate members not only provided the mainlanders with hiding places in Hong Kong but also accompanied them to open bank accounts into which their wages could be paid.
In Hong Kong, the Immigration Department raided six homes and six restaurants and found 15 forged ID cards. It arrested 26 people aged 26 to 56. Of them, 14 are mainlanders from places such as Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces in the northeast who were suspected of using fake ID cards to get jobs here. Most of them were working as dish washers, while two were employed to wait on tables.
