NZ passport fraud: Man gets record sentence for 25-year identity deception

Jahangir Alam received a four-year prison sentence for a 25-year passport fraud involving a false identity. Photo / Getty Images

By RNZ

A man who pretended to be his brother for 25 years and entered a sham marriage to get citizenship has been handed the longest jail term in New Zealand history for passport fraud.

Bangladesh-born Jahangir Alam, whose true name is not known, was found guilty of 29 offences, which included applying for visas for his wife and mother with his false identity, earlier this year.

He was jailed for four years at the Auckland District Court on Friday for producing forged documents, supplying false information and using a false passport, as Judge Peter Winter denounced the two-decade-long passport and immigration fraud.

“The initial identity fraud offending progressed and continued to mushroom from there,” said Judge Winter. “It was complex, premeditated and longstanding. The duration and scale of the offending is considerable.”

Alam’s 45-year-old wife, Taj Parvin Shilpi, who was sentenced to 12 months’ home detention, was “fully aware” of the fraud, Judge Winter said, as they were cousins who had lived in the same village growing up.

The Te Atatū couple have a 21-year-old son, a university student who was “entirely blameless”, said Judge Winter, having arrived with his mother as a 4-year-old in 2008. He became a citizen as the child of a New Zealander.

Alam went on to become president of the Bangladesh Association of New Zealand Inc (BANZI), where he helped up to 80 people applying for passports.

Bangladesh had no consulate in New Zealand and Alam, through BANZI, had helped with paperwork, passports and stamps. There was no suggestion any of those passports were false. The judge was asked to take Alam’s work in helping others into account as community service when looking at whether the sentence could be discounted.

Judge Winter said it was a “form of arrogance” that someone who was illegally in the country, and who had standing in the Bengali community, was dealing with other people’s passports. He refused to reduce Alam’s sentence for that, or for him being of good character.

Alam’s age and true identity remain unknown, but he is believed to be the 50-year-old older brother of John Alam, who lives in the US.

How he adopted his brother’s identity and came to possess the Bangladeshi passport that got him to New Zealand is unclear, but authorities found he lived in Japan in the 1990s before returning home and setting off for Auckland.

He became a taxi driver and entered a “marriage of convenience” with a New Zealand woman – they separated shortly after he got his residency. Alam told a jury earlier this year that they split because of differences over her “lifestyle” but claimed that it was a genuine partnership.

Having become a citizen, married Shilpi and had a son, he could still not complete his fraud, as Immigration New Zealand initially rejected her visa application because of discrepancies in the interviews staff had with the husband and wife.

But Shilpi arrived in 2008 on the first of a number of visas – her application for residence was rejected as her health was deemed too poor. Alam had also tried to get his mother a visitor visa, but that too had been declined.

Shilpi, who suffers from hypertension and diabetes, was “aware that he was not the person who he claimed to be, and was aware from the very beginning”, said Judge Winter. The jury had not believed her version that the couple did not meet until after his New Zealand marriage failed.

Immigration New Zealand welcomed the record prison sentence and said it was a complex investigation that took six years to complete.

Shilpi has only been on temporary visas and her last visitor visa has expired. Alam’s case will be referred to Internal Affairs, which is in charge of passports and citizenship.

- RNZ