Abu Dhabi: Around 604 forgery cases were recorded last year, the most prominent of which was 5 million Indian rupees (Dh278,000) in fake money, the Ministry of Interior revealed.
During the course of 2014, the Abu Dhabi Police Forensic Evidence Department also tested 2,136 samples for fraud.
Colonel Abdul Rahman Al Hammadi, head of the department, urged members of the public to ensure that documents are prepared in front of them and all empty fields are filled to prevent others from tampering with them later on.
The expert also advised individuals to write their full name next to their signature, and to use writing tools from a reliable source.
Faking documents, contracts, agreements, cheques, official financial statements, education certificates and their validation stamps, passports, currencies, credit cards and company logos are only some of the ways that forgery manifests itself in crime, the ministry said.
Last year, authorities seized Rs5 million (Dh278,000) in “professionally printed” fake money, describing this as the most significant forgery case in 2014.
The department said that is using the latest technologies in detecting fraud, including visible and invisible lights such as ultraviolet, infrared and reflective light and digital microscopes, among others.
In 2014, an Abu Dhabi Judicial Department official said that educational certificates accounted for around 40 per cent of all fake documents during the year.
“This has become a phenomenon committed [by individuals] to try to find jobs or visas … that correspond to the falsified degrees they claim to have. The forgery is usually discovered as these individuals give their degrees to foreign affairs offices for attestation,” the official said.
In the same year, a Pakistani man was sent to prison for faking an engineering degree to impress his father-in-law.
