On 6 April last year, officers from the Metropolitan Police raided an address in a quiet residential area of north London. Inside the innocuous looking property they found an Aladdin's cave of printing equipment - printers, embossers, metallic strips, holograms - acquired by an Albanian criminal gang who were churning out thousands of forged passports and identity cards.

During the raid, five gang members were arrested and later sentenced to a combined total of more than 21 years in prison. The investigation, which was christened Operation Hornblende, was another success for the little known Project Genesius.
Set up two years ago by officers from Operation Maxim, the Met's Organised Immigration Crime Unit,
the aim of Genesius is to identify and stop criminal networks from producing counterfeit documents. To date the project has successfully disrupted 14 such networks, seizing more than 100 printers and items of specialist equipment and discovered more than 30,000 false identities.

However, at a briefing at New Scotland Yard last week, senior officers from the Met admitted that unless more can be done by members of the printing industry, it faces an uphill battle in the future (PrintWeek, 29 January). Detective chief inspector Nick Downing, who is heading up Project Genesius, says that the force could raid a counterfeiting factory every day but it doesn't have the resources to do this so it desperately needs the help of ‘enablers' - businesses who supply these criminal gangs with the equipment that they require to produce counterfeit identities.

Helping hand
The Met wants suppliers of printing equipment - and in particular SMEs - to assist it by signing up to a voluntary code of conduct. Based on previous encounters with criminal gangs the police have drawn up a series of customer profiling guidelines that it wants signa-tories of the code to abide by (see boxout). If an order tallies with a number of the different tell-tale signs then the police want suppliers to alert them.

"Their [equipment suppliers'] number-one priority is business and we fully understand that, but we all have a responsibility to make sure that we're selling our products in a responsible and safe way," explains Downing. "If you're suspicious then don't sell - there is no middle ground for me,"

So far only 90 companies have signed up to the code and the Met has warned that if more don't come forward it may be forced to seek regulatory powers. It also warned that technically under UK law legitimate businesses that take money from criminal gangs could be charged with money laundering offences. Despite this hard-line stance Downing says that such measures are a last resort - the Met wants to give the industry the opportunity to work in partnership rather than push government to regulate and it has already established lines of dialogue.

"Officers on the project are working hard to prevent the sale of certain printers, stamps and other specialist equipment while educating the industry on the ways that criminals intent on creating false identities go about their activity," says Downing.

"The use of false identities is widespread across the UK and impacts on all of us. By working with the industry we can really make an impact and I would encourage any company selling these products to sign up to our code of conduct."
So what do equipment suppliers make of all this? One supplier, who wished to remain anonymous, admitted that one of his machines is the "machine of choice for counterfeiters", adding that his firm has already helped the police on a number of occasions and that members of his team have been aware of the tell-tale signs to look out for for years.

"It's funny how stupid these people are," he explains. "You can tell them a mile off. We've got a series of tick boxes here and if they hit the ticks then we call the police."

Market pressure
However, he also admits that there is a business imperative involved - namely to make a sale - and in such trying financial times at the end of the day a sale to a counterfeiter is still a sale.

This is the conundrum that officers face when trying to twist the arms of equipment suppliers, many of whom are struggling to stay afloat. But with the threat of regulation looming large and prosecution for money laundering offences also a potential factor, it might be worth the industry getting its house in order before it is forced to comply.

To find out more about Project Genesius email operationmaxim@met.pnn.police.uk