Dataram and reputed wife’s bogus passports were not issued by Passport Office

A police investigator told News Source that although at face value the passports appear authentic, they would have been flagged in any country because the information that would be stored in the barcode of the passports would have been different from that which appeared on the information page of the passports.

Dataram and reputed wife’s bogus passports were not issued by Passport Office

The two passports that were found in the possession of  drug convict Barry Dataram and his reputed wife Anjanie Boodnarine when they were busted in Suriname have been found to be bogus passports that were not issued by the Passport office.

Police investigators have uncovered records that point to at least one of the passports having been reported stolen.

A police investigator told News Source that although at face value the passports appear authentic, they would have been flagged in any country because the information that would be stored in the barcode of the passports would have been different from that which appeared on the information page of the passports.

“These machine readable passports have a number of security features including the barcodes which would contain additional information about the passport holder. So when it is scanned, the information that would pop up on an immigration officer’s computer would have to be the same as what is on the information page, as well as the other information that would be stored there”, he explained.

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Among the features that point to Dataram and his wife’s passports being totally bogus, are the passports numbers.  Although his passport has an issue date of 2013 and the wife’s passport has an issue date of 2016, the passport sequence numbers were close with the number for his 2013 passport being more recent that the one for her passport.

Additionally, passports being issued in 2016 no longer carry the information page headings in all capital letters and in Dataram’s passport, it has the abbreviation for April as “AR” for date of issue and “APR” for date of expiry. The “APR” abbreviation is the only one that is used.

When pleading guilty to the forged passport charge on Tuesday, Dataram told the court that he was the one who got the forged passports and he was the one who inserted the photographs into the passports.

A senior police source told News Source that although the passports are bogus, it should worry law enforcement that they are very similar to the original passports and even have scanned images and similar security features to original passports. It is suspected that Dataram may have had links to someone who may be producing bogus passports using an old template that is no longer being used.

Investigations into the matter are ongoing.

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