TAK - Police have arrested four Thais and seven Myanmar nationals in a crackdown on fraudulent Thai ID card issuance in this border province.

A former assistant registrar for Mae Sot district is also being sought after it was found that as many as 700 people had obtained ID cards, reportedly paying between 40,000 and 100,000 baht each.

Seven of those arrested on Tuesday were Myanmar nationals holding illegally issued Thai ID cards.

The four Thais included two women, one of them a house owner who agreed to have her address used as the listed residence of the cardholders. An assistant registrar and a temporary employee of the Mae Sot municipal office were also held.

The arrests took place following raids on 25 locations in Mae Sot, according to deputy national police chief Pol Gen Samran Nualma.

He said the gang had illegally issued Thai ID cards beginning with “0” — the category for people who have no house registration records. Most people eligible for such cards live in border or remote areas or have been displaced.

The raids on Tuesday came a month after 11 people were arrested in a crackdown on illegal issuance of ID cards in Surat Thani province. Many of the holders were reportedly found to be from Mae Sot in Tak.

Detectives in Tak, meanwhile, are still looking for a former assistant registrar of Mae Sot municipality, identified only as Kit.

He was expelled from the civil service last year after his wife was linked to an arms-trafficking gang that supplied rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition to armed groups near the Thai-Myanmar border.

“Zero-number” ID cards are issued to non-citizens, stateless individuals or ethnic minorities legally residing in the country. Holders of have fundamental rights to education, medical treatment and employment in Thailand. After holding the cards for five years, they can travel freely in the country and apply for Thai citizenship.

Pol Gen Samran, who will take over as national police chief on Oct 1, said after the Surat Thani operation that authorities were cracking down on all forms of registration fraud.

These can include identity theft involving inactive registrants, false birth registrations, false marriages, and misuse of education entitlements, he said.