Introduction – Today there are a lot of people on the Internet selling second passports, citizenships, residencies who are not licensed law firms. They can be operating behind an anonymous corporation on some island in the South Pacific or in Eastern Europe. Once they have your money they can disappear without any likelihood of trouble from their unhappy customers since you will not be able to find them.

You should never deal with any entity that is not a lawyer in the country you are dealing with or about. If they are a lawyer it means the government of that country considers the entity reputable and they did a due diligence background investigation on the lawyer(s) before giving them a license. If you are dealing with a licensed lawyer or law firm then you have no recourse if you did not get what you paid for. You also can be assured that whatever was sold to you is real and you will not be arrested crossing borders with the passport. When you use a law firm you also have attorney client privilege for additional protection.

We will enlighten you on the various types of fraud out there so you can be an educated consumer and not fall prey to the thieves out there impersonating as legitimate businesses with professional looking websites and names. Remember a professional sounding name is not the same thing as being a law firm. Only deal with a law firm that is a law firm in the country where the citizenship, residency or passport is coming from.

Miss-Information – There is a lot of bad information on the Internet. In recent years several countries have discontinued their passport programs. Many people still report them as active. Panama is one such country that has completely dropped its passport program.

Economic Citizenships – These are more often economic residencies with a passport. There is one in Dominica; St. Kitts and Nevis and Austria. The requirement is generally buying an approved home, which is often inflated in price. This gives them their profit for providing residency and a passport to you. It is rare to find a citizenship program, Usually it is a residency and after three to five years the residency can be a citizenship if you apply and it is granted. Sometimes the residency never converts to a citizenship. It is usually going to be at least $500,000 ($750,000 might be more realistic) for the house, government fees, legal fees etc. Austria is one million dollars. In a business. These programs are not cheap and you may have to keep the house for many years as well. These passports will always reference your birth country on the passport, which can interfere with travel in certain instances. These countries will always notify your home country of the issuance of the passport. This can affect banking situations in the future. They do not secret name changes.

Visas – Be careful that the country you are seeking the passport from has visa free travel to many countries. If one is required to obtain a Visa the passport may prove close to worthless. Requiring a visa from passport holders of a certain country is a sure sign that the nation is not encouraging visitors from that country.

You may very well have to appear at their embassy for an interview. They will ask you where you lived for the last ten years, do you have or have you ever had any other citizenships or passports, why are you not using these other passports, where do you work, provide proof of financial means as in bank records, real estate, tax payments for employment, and other things. When it comes out that you are just a passport holder and are not really from there and living there they may very well just turn you down. So you always want to see the list of Visa free countries you can travel to.

Every one of these countries passports will not let you travel Visa free to the USA or Canada, so if this is your goal forget it. Once the country offers the programs with the passport then the visa free travel to USA and Canada is closed. The African passports are only good for travel to other third world African countries without a Visa. Essentially these passports have no value – they will require hard to get visas and no banks will not accept them.

Frauds and Scams – The main fraud alert is when they say that you do not have to come to the country to apply in person. The story allows for them to send the passport and citizenship to you by courier for your convenience. Run if you hear this. Any legitimate government program is going to want you to be fingerprinted in person, photographed in person and they will want to examine your Passport in person. A legitimate program will also run your passport, name and fingerprints through Interpol to see if you are on a watch hit, have any government holds on you or if you are in any way a person of interest to some governments. Governments just do not allow one to apply long distance because they are not sure who is applying. You will need to go into a nice big government building clearly marked as the government immigration office or passport office with various uniformed police and no parking zones to get photographed, fingerprinted and sign forms.

How the Passport Scams Operate – One way is to supply you with another persons passport, usually a dead person. They alter the photos on the passport to reflect your image but in the computers is another person’s photo. Imagine getting stopped at some airport somewhere and they contact the issuing country for verification and see different photos. Now you are a person of interest and you get to enjoy long drawn out interrogations. Since you will generally be angry with the people who sold you the passport the sellers generally are well hidden since they do not want you to be able to provide any vital information about them enabling the authorities to find them or even know who they are. Remember only deal with lawyers and law firms in the country that is issuing you the passport.

Another scam is the people at the passport agency obtain the blank passports that are faulty. They can be printed badly, the binders are crooked, and they were cut off center, whatever. These passports are sold to you. The government has already cancelled these passport numbers as destroyed and they were sitting in a storage room waiting to be destroyed. Imagine the experience you will have when some immigration authority contacts the issuing country to see if the passport is real and they are told it was a cancelled passport blank never intended to be used. Now they get excited about a big investigation to find the culprits. Be careful, use a law firm.

Another scam is the sellers get a citizen in the country to say that you are their long lost child and then you come in under them as a child. This can work if you are under 21 but be careful because you are not their child. If someone wants to try this and you are middle aged in a word – run.

Another take off on this is a citizen adopts you. This tends to only work with young people.

Sometimes they have a citizen apply for a passport and then change the picture to yours and send it to you. Can also work with dead people.

Another scam is to have you marry a citizen and this can make you eligible for some sort of residency and passport. Think bigamy if you are already married. Think blackmail by the woman and or passport sellers. This can really blow up if there is an investigation. You and the woman will be separated for questioning. You will be asked to describe each other’s unusual body marks, moles and body description etc. Then you will be asked about habits like brushing teeth, toothpaste, soap and shampoo used, how often have sex, bathroom habits, food choices, relatives, phone calls, TV shows etc. The two stories (yours and hers) will be compared and your stories will fall apart. Then what happens can get ugly. They may just cancel the passport and residency or worse like a fine or charge you with a crime, deport you or who knows what.

It is my understanding that printers in some parts of Asia sell counterfeit passport blanks. Thus the sellers just print in your name and insert your digitized photo and courier you the passport. If you try to use it expect big trouble. So they charge you tens of thousands of dollars and sell you a counterfeit passport they paid $50 for. They do the same thing with residency cards, driver licenses, citizenship Id’s, etc. Again mail order ID is not going to be authentic.

Passport Fraud Prevention – Only deal with a lawyer of law firm. Make sure you are being processed in the country at the bona fide immigration offices. These should be large buildings on ground level with government emblems, no parking zones and police sprinkled about. Make sure you see plenty of regular local people out and about. An office on the fifth floor of an office building with a little sign outside that says immigration office is probably a scam. They will photograph you, take your prints have you sign forms. The lawyer should be with you at all times, if not insist that he stays with you at all times when being processed. Our lawyers always do this. Any questions to you should go through the lawyer first. You should pick up any and all citizenship cards, residency cards, driver licenses and passports in person at the appropriate government office with your lawyer in attendance always.

Diplomatic Passports – Be careful here. Most of these being sold are fraudulent. Diplomatic passports should come with an official letter of posting to a specific country. . Someone from the issuing government needs to go through channels and request a visa for you when you travel as a diplomat when you go to the country you are posted to. They must state reason for your trip, duration, residence address in the country etc. Is someone from the issuing country going to really do this for you and if so for how much money? Most countries will give you three days as an unannounced visiting diplomat that just shows up on the border without any Visa.

Don’t think you are just going to pay some guy on the Internet some money and now you are going to run around the world with diplomatic immunity from laws etc. Not going to happen. No responsible country is going to ever give a stranger a diplomatic passport. You need to be posted as an Ambassador, Consul General or Adjunct Consul General to get the full diplomatic immunity. When we assist a client this is how it is done. They and their family have full diplomatic immunity. We do not do Honorary Consul positions in that this is not full diplomatic immunity and does not cover the family. Staff positions for employees do not have much diplomatic immunity even though they travel with a diplomatic Passport.

Honorary Diplomatic Passport – Weaker than a diplomatic passport and probably of little value. Will attract unwanted scrutiny and questions as to what you are doing in their country and why. Save your money just something designed to charge you a lot of money for that is not worth anything and probably a lot worse than a regular passport.

Official Passports – These are issued to people that are employed by the country on official business but do not have any diplomatic privileges. These are well-respected passports that have a hands off posture associated with them, yet do not have the diplomatic immunity. Before you seek to obtain one remember these are only for government employed people and you will probably have no cover story to back you up with phone numbers in the issuing country government offices that will verify you and the fact that you are in that country and why. These may often require a visa. Stay away from these, they are not diplomatic and probably of not real value.

How Criminals Do It – They generally are desperate to get out of a country because there is are police looking for them actively or passively in a database. Thus these criminals are in no position to leave where they are with their existing travel documents since they are wanted. If they are in country that has obscure border crossing outposts without serious computers and scanners it makes it easy for them since they only need to show a reasonable looking passport and not worry about inclusion in various databases. So they call up lawyers and ask them if they can get a residency or citizenship with a passport without visiting the country in person. Showing up in person to be processed is likely to lead to their arrest so this is something they will not do. They prefer to have the documents sent to them by a courier. Of course no legitimate program ever delivers such documents by courier to such people. The criminals will resort to offering large sums of money if you can do this favor for them with your contacts in government etc. No sane lawyer of government official ever takes such a request seriously. The crooks generally get forged, stolen or otherwise not authentic documents and try to cross borders in a primitive setting where the computers are no well hooked up or perhaps their are none at all. Late at night might be helpful. They hope for the best and get across or stopped.

Fictitious Countries – There are non-country issuers of passports. These are not passports, and are more of a novelty item that looks like a passport. What people do is then get third world countries in Africa to issue visas to these "passports" by applying for a visa and mailing the passport in with the appropriate fee. These countries would give a Martian a visa if he paid for it. Now with a few visa stamps and stickers in it they are good to go. They generally find a late night small land border crossing and try to confuse the immigration guard into believing that they have a real passport using the visa stamps from other countries as the basis for their argument. These passports usually look pretty good.

Sometimes these are issued from countries that once existed that no longer exist like Rhodesia, which further confuses the guard. At times these passports may work in a third world country using a small obscure land border. Often they will not work and the guards may be offended at you thinking they are so stupid and punish you with prison, fines, confiscate the "passport", who knows what. These passports will never work at an international airport. No bank is going to accept them for account opening. Save your money.

Banking Passports – The term applies to a passport that is to be used only for opening offshore bank accounts, never to be traveled on. Since African passports are the cheapest these are often purchased to be used as banking passports. The only passports from Africa that a reputable offshore bank is going to accept is a passport from South Africa who does not offer easy to get passports. Obtaining a passport from one of these other African states to open a bank account is not going to work; banks do not take them anymore. Same thing for other small third world countries. Don’t think banks are so stupid. Also your story will fall apart. They will ask for references from your "home country" that can be verified. They may ask for a utility bill, a bank reference in that country, or other proof of address. The bank if uncertain about you will ask you to copy all the pages of the passport and send them to them. Then they see you are not using the passport and another red flag goes up and they ask you to appear in person. If you do come in person they will see if you used this passport to enter the country the bank is in and if not they will not open the account. You are not the first one who tried this on them.

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