Word: frauds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Fraud soars, enforcement lags...
...fugitives and terrorists use bogus identity papers, including U.S. passports and visas, to travel freely around the world. Says one DEA agent: "I can't think of a major investigation involving hashish, heroin, cocaine or marijuana smuggling in the past five years that hasn't involved passport fraud or false drivers' licenses...
...million U.S. passport applications received yearly, federal officials estimate that 30,000 to 60,000 are fraudulent-and that only the most obvious ones, about 1,000, are detected. The State Department's office of security has responsibility for pursuing passport and visa fraud, but its agents complain that their own superiors have handcuffed them. Says one agent: "The integrity of the passport system has gone down the drain...
...spend less time enforcing passport laws than tending to their other duties, which include providing protection for State Department officials and visiting dignitaries and investigating colleagues for security clearances. As a result, the department's 450 security agents investigate only about 200 of the 1,000 or so fraud cases detected annually. The rest are farmed out to other investigative agencies-FBI, DEA, Customs Service-or not investigated at all. Thus a potentially effective law enforcement weapon is left halfcocked. Says one State Department agent: "In every case I've done in years, the guy was involved...
Passports could be made harder to obtain-by instituting fingerprint identification or designing passports that could be matched with prints on birth certificates. Other answers to the fraud problem, say State Department agents, include giving some other agency responsibility for security-clearance checks. The agents also want the power to make arrests. At present they have to bring along another law enforcement officer whenever they finally catch up with a violator...