A woman and three men entered New Zealand using forged passports which cost them thousands of dollars as part of a scam in Indonesia.
One paid more than $8000, another about $6700 and another about $5225, Judge Geoff Rea said in Napier District Court yesterday
The four each pleaded guilty
to one charge of using a forged passport and one of possessing a false passport. They were sentenced to 13 months' jail.
The four were among six Indonesians arrested when police went to a house in the Napier suburb of Onekawa, on June 19. The woman was identified only as Suwarni, and the three men as Thomas Triyono, 27, Abdul Rohim, 29, and Mohammed Royani, 35.
The passports used were forged versions of Indonesian documents.
Crown prosecutor Russell Collins said all four had been issued with removal warrants, and should be deported at the expiry of their sentences.
The other two, apprehended as overstayers, are in custody awaiting deportation. This is expected to happen within a week, depending on transport arrangements.
Judge Rea was told Rohim and Triyono arrived in Auckland on July 28 last year, while Suwarni and Royani entered New Zealand on October 16.
The judge said it seemed that in May police in Indonesia arrested four people on suspicion of making and selling photo-substituted passports.
It was clear those in court had taken part in the process by paying for false passports, and that they knowingly used them to illegally enter New Zealand, and remain in the country illegally, he said.
Judge Rea added that with worldwide concerns about terrorism, it was a bad time for the four to be involved in such a fraud.
"Right from the outset the scheme was totally illegal," he said.
He said "stern measures" had to be taken to stop it, and while the quartet had entered New Zealand to work, and there was no suggestion it was for any other reason, they had to face the consequences.
He noted, as defence counsel Derek Qulliam had also said, that Triyono, the only English-speaker among the quartet, had skills that could have made him a readily-accepted immigrant had he wanted to come to New Zealand by legitimate means.
- HAWKE'S BAY TODAY
