Mexico Passport Scam Exposed

Over the years, we’ve seen many promoters selling bogus and unofficially issued passports come and go. Some are dead, including at least one murdered by an angry client. Others are in jail, and a few have retired.

They’ve sold passports from countries including Belize, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guyana, Hungary, Lithuania, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Portugal, and Romania.

Mexico: The Latest Passport Scam

The newest passport scam that has come to our attention recently is for Mexico.

The Mexico “program,” as the company offering this scheme calls it, can be completed in four months and with only two visits to the country. The cost? Only $30,000 for a passport giving you visa-free travel privileges to 160 countries, including all 28 members of the EU.

It sounds great, but we can’t find any support for the promoter’s claims in the Mexican Constitution or Law of Nationality. In most cases, the law requires that you must live in Mexico for at least five years before applying for citizenship. You must also speak Spanish fluently and demonstrate substantial integration into Mexican culture. We’ve written to the secretary of foreign affairs to find out if the program is legit, and will let you know what we hear back.

We suspect the promoter of this program found a corrupt official working in the passport office willing to create a bogus history of long-term residence in Mexico along with a false certification that the applicant meets all the other requirements for citizenship.

We can’t confirm that this company bribes immigration officials to help acquire Mexican citizenship. But if it doesn’t, why else would they violate the law to help applicants receive citizenship in only four months?

You’re Asking for Trouble With a Bogus or Illegally Acquired Passport

Think about it. You just acquired a passport –and maybe even a certificate of citizenship – from a country that didn’t issue it to you through normal procedures.

What happens when there’s a change of government and the new administration finds out that corrupt officials in the old one sold bogus or invalidly issued passports? That’s more than a theoretical risk. In 2012, Canada revoked the citizenship of more than 3,000 naturalized citizens after a fraud investigation.

What happens if a terrorist manages to buy a bogus passport? It lessens the value of the passport for ordinary citizens and discredits the reputation of the entire country. Belize found this out the hard way in 2012, when police in Mexico arrested a known Palestinian terrorist travelling on a newly issued Belize passport. He had spent only a few days in that country – just enough time to find a corrupt official to sell him a passport.

What happens to you if your government finds out that you paid someone to bribe a foreign official to obtain a second passport? If you’re a US citizen, you could be imprisoned for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Just imagine it: One day, you’re making what you think is a routine border crossing on your bogus Mexican passport. The border official frowns, picks up the phone, and calls for assistance. In seconds, you’re surrounded by armed men and forced into a small, cold room, where you’re interrogated for hours. If border officials somehow learn how you got the passport, you could face years in prison.

Even if you’re lucky and use the passport to cross borders without any problems, what happens when you try to renew it? If you weren’t legally naturalized in the country that issued your passport, it might not be renewable. One promoter even admitted to me that I shouldn’t try to renew the fake Bulgarian passport he was trying to sell me – or even use it to enter and leave Bulgaria.

Is it worth the risk? I don’t think so, but the companies dealing in these documents continue to flourish, so they must be finding a ready market.

Red Flags in Second Passport Programs

It’s unfortunate that scam artists have become involved in promoting second passports.

But how can you determine which second passport programs are legitimate… and which are scams? In conducting due diligence on second passport offerings, I look for the following red flags:

• Too cheap. The total cost of the least expensive white-market (legal) economic citizenship program, in the Commonwealth of Dominica, comes to about $100,000 for a single applicant or $175,000 for an opposite-sex married couple. Any passport issued for much less than that amount should be presumed to be issued illegally, unless the company offering it can point to specific black-letter law authorizing its issuance.
• Too easy. No country issues a certificate of nationality and a passport without a detailed application process, including completion of official application forms, a background check, and, in virtually all cases, at least one personal visit. (St. Kitts & Nevis is an exception.)
• Too fast. No government can approve an application for citizenship and passport in only a month. The fastest authorities can conduct a reasonably complete investigation and move the application through several layers of bureaucracy is three or four months, and usually much longer.
• Too anonymous. Any promoter who tells you that you have to pay cash for your passport and that the ability to issue the passport is based on a secret law or regulation, or who promises to issue you a passport in any name you choose, falls into this category.
• Too limited. Passports that come without a certificate of nationality fit into this category, because they can’t be renewed.
• Too good to be true.

I’ve been in the offshore business since 1984, and I’ve seen dozens of these passport frauds come and go. And from experience with thousands of clients, I can tell you: the only proper way to do this is the legal way.

Need Help?

Since 1984, we’ve helped more than 15,000 customers and clients protect their wealth using proven, low-risk planning. In some cases this also includes helping them get a second passport or residency. To see if our planning is right for you, please book in a free no-obligation call with one of our associates. You can do that here.