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| Man showing Albanian Passport illustration |
The denunciation by the company "Aleat Safran" revealed that a 42-year-old person from Fier, who is convicted several times of fraud, adopted the name of his emigrant brother and is serving two prison sentences under his name without being dictated by the judicial system.
A few years after he had committed a 10-year sentence on allegations of "fraud, falsification and acquisition of state duty," Alban Muco, a 42-year-old from Fier, applied for a biometric passport and a new identity card.While his name was linked to a 10-year sentence, Muço decided on the name of his brother living in Italy. The first application with the name of the brother, according to the Prosecutor's office that launched the investigation after the company's concern, is made in June 2015 and Alban Muço was equipped with a passport named L.Muço in early 2016.
But the 42-year-old used this new and clean identity to commit new crimes. From the verifications carried out by the Fier Judicial District Prosecution, it results that he was sentenced two more times in 2016 and 2017 for allegations of "fraud" and "false denunciation".
In both cases, he appeared in court with his brother's name and was convicted as if he was not dictated by the court system. While the fraud is discovered only after his brother applied to the Albanian consulate in Milan and the clash of data alerted the system. Shortly thereafter, the company denounced the double identity in the Interior Ministry and in early 2016 the Prosecution began investigations.
Hidden behind his brother identity
The case of Albano Muço is not the only one denounced for identity fraud in the district of Fier. The company "Aleat Safran Group" has recently denounced 38 cases of 'identity theft' or 'change of generalities'.
Investigations conducted by Fier Prosecutor Çlirim Sino concluded that Albano Muço was serving two convictions with the name of his emigrant brother only after verifying the fingerprints.
The 42-year-old, who was questioned at Drenova Prison in Korça, told the Prosecutor that he did not recognize Albano Muço [himself], while denying to recognisehis brother when a photograph of the latter was presented to him.
Turns out for Muço to be convicted three times for a series of criminal offenses. According to the document issued by the Prosecution, he was first convicted in 2002 with a 10 years of imprisonment by the Fier First Instance Court for the criminal offenses of "fraud, forgery of documents, the acquisition of state duty etc" .
He left the prison in 2010 and then applied for a passport and identity card. The Prosecution finds that he made several applications. An application named Albano Muço was rejected because he had not submitted an old ID card. But in June 2015, he managed to get one using the name of his brother living in Italy.
The Prosecution confirmed that the passport issued in Fier didn't passed abroad. Meanwhile, using his new identity, Muco returned again to fraud. Claiming he was an officer of the Ministry of Justice, he had deceived various merchants and employed two people as bodyguards and and as driver.
Claiming , He said also to Prosecutors who questioned him that he had been an employee of the Ministry of Justice, and according to the Prosecution, he lived publicly 6 years using his brother's name.
Denounced by the person he deceived, he was arrested in 2016 and kept the name he had stolen during the investigation and trial. A series of articles in the media that report his sentence of fraud and then for false denunciation, refer to the author named L.Muco.
Following the investigation he was twice sentenced by the Tirana Court in 2016 "for fraud" and a year later for "false denunciation". Both of these sentences appear in the name of L.Muço and not of Albano Muço.
But this is revealed just after the verifications carried out by the Fier Prosecution Office to detect the "identity theft". The Prosecution found that the applications for passport and ID card named L.Muco were made by persons with different fingerprints.
The comparison of these fingerprints revealed that the applications made in Albania, two of which from the Peqin and Drenova prisons actually belonged to Albano Muça and not to L.Muco's brother, who had applied for documents under his name in Italy .
Following these verifications in January this year, the Fier Prosecution filed a 42-year-old criminal proceeding with the charge of "counterfeiting", while the Prosecutor ordered that the criminal offenses are recordet so far in the name of L. Muco to be attributed to Albano.
The latter did not accept the charges and claimed that it was L.Muco, even asked by the Prosecutor, he said did not recognize any person named Albano Muço. He claimed that in 2016 he was employed by the Ministry of Justice as a lawyer in the Public Relations Sector.
He even stated that he did not recognised the person in the photo, whe made the application in Italy, which in fact is his brother. He further added that on January 15, 2016 has filed a complaint to Police Station No. 3 in Tirana for the loss of identity documents, identity card, biometric passport and bank card. But the Prosecution verified that such denunciation was never made.