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State Department: Improvements Needed to Strengthen U.S. Passport Fraud Detection Efforts

GAO-05-853T Published: Jun 29, 2005. Publicly Released: Jun 29, 2005.
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Highlights

Maintaining the integrity of the U.S. passport is essential to the State Department's efforts to protect U.S. citizens from terrorists, criminals, and others. State issued about 8.8 million passports in 2004. During the same year, State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security arrested about 500 individuals for passport fraud, and about 300 persons were convicted. Passport fraud is often intended to facilitate other crimes, including illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and alien smuggling. GAO examined (1) how passport fraud is committed, (2) what key fraud detection challenges State faces, and (3) what effect new passport examiner performance standards could have on fraud detection.

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Crime preventionTerroristsCriminal activitiesCriminalsEmployee trainingFederal employeesFraudIdentity theftLaw enforcementPassportsPerformance measuresStandards