Fraudsters who supplied falsified passports to some of the UK’s most wanted criminals have been jailed. Anthony Beard obtained real passports in other people’s names then added the photographs of criminals, including two fugitive murderers.
He was jailed for six years and eight months after pleading guilty. Chris McCormack, who was his link with crime gangs, was jailed for eight years. Judge Nicholas Ainley said they had helped “wicked, violent criminals”.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said Beard’s customers made “an awful lot of money out of organised criminality”. Anthony Beard, 61, a minor fraudster from Sydenham, in South London, first devised a way of obtaining genuine passports for criminals to use, two decades ago.
He would find vulnerable people in rehab centres and veterans’ shelters, many of whom had drug or alcohol problems, and persuade them to lend him their identity in exchange for very little money.
He would then apply to renew the vulnerable person’s expired passport, but the photo he submitted would be a recent picture of a wanted criminal in need of a new identity.
By using the passport renewal process, he avoided the need for an in-person interview – required for new passport applicants – something that would be impossible for a criminal hiding out in another country.
Beard countersigned the passport photos himself. Later, he involved other people – whose occupations included “licensees” and “psychiatrists” – to supposedly confirm that the passport photos were true likenesses.
The NCA said Beard might have supplied as many as 108 fraudulently-obtained genuine passports (FOGs) over a 20-year period, charging as much as £15,000 – £20,000 for each one. The person whose passport was being used was paid as little as £100.
After he had been running the scam for some years, Beard met Chris McCormack, 67, also known as Christopher Zietek, a long-time gangster who split his time between South London, Ireland and Spain.
In the 1990s, McCormack had been linked to a notorious North London gang, known as the Adams Family, the A-team, or the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate. He once stood trial for torturing a man who owed the Adams family money, in a horrific attack reminiscent of the movie Reservoir Dogs. By the end of the assault, only skin held the man’s nose and left ear to his face. Despite having the victim’s blood on his jacket, McCormack was acquitted of attempted murder by a jury.
Because of his criminal credentials, McCormack was trusted by gangsters who were on the run and became a kind of broker. He acted as the liaison between Beard, in South London, and serious criminals in Spain and Dubai who needed passports to travel undetected. It was through McCormack that Beard ended up supplying passports to some of the UK’s most wanted criminals.
Beard and McCormack obtained passports for at least five suspected members of the Glasgow-based Gillespie gang, thought to be one of the wealthiest organised crime groups in Scotland.
One Gillespie gang member, Jordan Owens, fled to Portugal after shooting Jamie Lee dead in Glasgow, in 2017. He was returned to Scotland and convicted of murder, in 2022.
Source: BBC
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