Zheng - who only speaks Chinese and was accompanied by a translator - said he'd gotten the nationality certificate 10 years earlier. But something about it didn't look right, so the staff at Social Security asked Zheng and his translator to wait while they made a cross check with the Immigration Department.

Director Diana Locke confirms that they easily spotted it as a forgery of the old type of nationality certificate - the one without any significant security features. Immigration staff went over to the Social Security office to interview the men. When their story didn't add up, they called police and laid charges on both men for uttering upon a forged document and attempting to use it to obtain another piece of identification.

With these two criminal charges they were taken into police custody and have been arraigned in court where they were fined two thousand dollars for uttering and one thousand dollars for trying to use a forged document.

They remain in police custody tonight pending further investigation.

And, indeed, further investigation is required since this shows that bogus nationality documents are still in production and that immigration rings are still penetrating the system. These forgeries are believed to originate from an immigration ring that operates outside the department. As we noted, the old nationality document has no major security feature unlike the new one which was introduced in May of this year.