This is apparent from the 2021 annual figures on identity and document fraud that the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee has shared with De Telegraaf. In most cases, these were forgeries with entry stamps or dates of birth of asylum seekers in their passports. Most of the fraudsters discovered came from Syria (132), Yemen (48), Turkey (42) and Afghanistan (19).
According to an employee of the Expertise Center for Identity Fraud and Documents (ECID), the majority of these are migrants who want to pretend to be younger than they are or pretend to have left the European Union in the hopes of submitting a new application that has the opportunity. offers asylum in the Netherlands. In total, the Marechaussee registered 2,321 fraud cases last year, in which 4,313 documents appeared. “The absolute hotspots remain the airports. Schiphol yields the most cases by distance (607), followed by Eindhoven (74),” said spokesman Mike Hofman. “But we are also busier with fraudsters along the national borders with Germany and Belgium.” There are also more counterfeit driver’s licenses found.
cat and mouse game
“It remains a cat-and-mouse game between the investigative services and fraudsters, in which new methods are constantly being developed to outsmart us,” says First Lieutenant Hofman. “We go along with that way of thinking and constantly put ourselves in the criminal’s brain in order to increase the chance of being caught. Everything is tried to mislead us. Often without results, because we now know what to look out for when people travel with false papers.”
There is a room in the complex of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee at Schiphol where all false documents are kept. There’s even a fantasy passport box. It includes documents from countries that do not even exist (anymore). The most commonly encountered is the ‘world passport’. It is very similar to a passport, but is not linked to any country.
The Marechaussee knows that there is a lively trade in false papers on social media channels such as Telegram. “It’s a kind of Marketplace where you can choose the identity,” says the ECID employee. “You are looking for someone who is about your height and age and who looks a bit like you. Furthermore, a lot can be tinkered with, so that you can continue as a look-a-like. For things like that, transit countries like Greece and Turkey have complete ‘travel agencies’ that style migrants after the stolen identity, complete with makeup and hairdresser.”
Since the European migration crisis in 2015, document fraud has increasingly focused on facilitating migrants. “It often involves simple changes to the passport, such as a stamp or visa from a country where someone has supposedly been. To make the flight story more believable,” a document expert from the Marechaussee clarifies.
The digitization of identification will be unstoppable in the future. “Now you still have physical resources, but that will possibly disappear and give the criminal circuit new opportunities and possibilities. We have to make sure that we always stay one step ahead of them and also pay attention to other things that give us information about whether something is not right,” said the first lieutenant. „That is why we are constantly training our people border security profilingwhere we check on the basis of deviant behavior and strange travel routes.”
Other crime
The Marechaussee also checks with ‘vacationers’ whether they have enough money with them for a stay. “If not, they might come in with very different intentions. And if a young woman from South America, for example, says she’s coming here to work in a hotel, you should also be alert. Then that is often a cover for work in prostitution. It is therefore possible that there is human trafficking. In short, the pass check is often the start of many criminal investigations and exposes many other crimes.”