Albanian people trafficking gangs are selling fake passports through Instagram stories that are automatically deleted to avoid detection, according to a Telegraph investigation.
Gangs are offering to give passports for £12,500 with photos that look like the illegal immigrant or criminal who wants to travel across Europe and enter the UK.
They claim they can bypass biometric e-gate checks by using older passports that can only be checked manually at busy border crossings.
Passports from countries including Greece, Romania and the Czech Republic are believed to have been stolen to resemble the person the gang wants to smuggle.
This mirrors a similar scam run by a former police officer with the notorious Adams crime family, who sold fraudulent passports to dozens of gangsters across Europe wanted for murder, drug trafficking and money laundering.
Albanian gangs advertise their services through a private Instagram account with the tag “Passage to the UK” that has 1,600 followers.
£12,500 to get to the UK
It advertises through Instagram stories, which are deleted after 24 hours, rather than on a public page to avoid detection. Instagram said it removed the account after being contacted by The Telegraph.
An undercover journalist who sent a direct message to the account operators was told it would cost £12,500 per person for her and her boyfriend to get to the UK.
"The cost of passports and travel tickets will be covered by us. You will pay when you arrive," they said.
The journalist asked: “What kind of passports will you use for us?” -“It depends on how you look. It depends on your face and who you look like. But that’s not a problem. We can use Greek, Romanian or Czech passports.”
The British Home Office announces tougher measures
A Home Office spokesman said: "Anyone attempting to enter the UK using false documents will face the full consequences of the law. The Border Force's priority is to maintain border security at all times and our officers have a range of tools at their disposal to identify fraudsters.
“Social media companies have a responsibility to remove content that promotes and helps fund illegal and criminal activities, such as ads promising fake documents or illegal border crossings. This month, we announced a new partnership with social media companies to accelerate action to tackle and remove this type of content.”
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, said: “Human trafficking is illegal and where we find content that coordinates this activity, we remove it from our platforms, as we have done in this case.
"While NCA figures show that over 90 per cent of content is removed by social media companies when notified, according to the recent government announcement, we continue to invest in technology that identifies, reports and removes this type of content."
