Identify theft awareness workshop by Immigration

Immigration Services are hosting a workshop codenamed PRIIP (Pacific Region Immigration Identity Report) Phase 2 which is aimed at training relevant agencies and private sector how to detect genuine identification from forgeries.
It is all about training the relevant government agencies dealing with foreign visitors (or intending visitors) on how to identify the genuine identity documents from forgery.
The workshops are being conducted by New Zealand Immigration Services officers, Shaun Evans and Hannah Mallock and Kate O’Brien from Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Kate from the CBSA explained that there is a market out there for counterfeit documents and the training is to help everyone in the relevant industries to identify the counterfeit documents.
Shaun Evans said they are taking a multi-agency approach with Immigration, Customs and Police in conjunction with Health and Quarantine (for Biosafety) as well as Financial Intelligence Unit (dealing with international finance) and Business and Trade Investment Board (dealing with foreign investors)
The team held sessions on Sunday and Monday with Immigration, Customs and Police personnel who are assigned to airport or port duties and who are basically our front line border control officers.
The criminal element use counterfeit passports to enter a country or use fake credit cards to obtain credit that they would not otherwise be entitled to.
The private sector are also affected and the Wednesday session and includes the banks, financial institutions and travel agencies, all of which require a client to produce official identification in order to do business with them.
For instance, to open a bank account, a person must produce official documents sufficient to establish your identity (drivers licence, birth certificate or passport etc).Travel agents are in a similar position with requiring a valid passport for a traveller in order to purchase a ticket and so on.
Pacific peoples are friendly and want to be welcoming and to be nice to people, wherein lies the weak link which can be exploited by the criminal element – whether by chance when the opportunity arises or by those in organized crime.
The PRIIP workshop is part of an ongoing series on identifying the tell tale signs of fake identity and another workshop will be held in Tonga and the PRIIP team intend to take some of the Cook Islands personnel with them to help with the training workshops of the officials in Tonga. Funding for PRIIP is courtesy of the NZ Pacific Security Fund under the auspices of Foreign Affairs in NZ.