News and insight into biometric identification and authentication

Woman caught with surgery to fool biometrics

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

A 27 year-old Chinese woman named Lin Ring has been arrested attempting to illegally gain entry into Japan following a deportation in 2007, according to an article from The Register. The attempt was made by having her fingerprints of her right hand surgically removed and switched with those of her left hand to fool the biometric collection the Japanese government performs on non-citizens entering Japan.


Reportedly, Lin was able to fool agents collecting data at the Kansai Airport last year utilizing another’s passport with her switched fingerprints. However, when entering into a suspicious marriage to a Japanese man, police investigation turned out scars on her fingers and thumbs which provoked a deeper investigation.

According to Lin, she paid 1.3 million Yen for the surgery that was performed in a private home in her home country of China. Lin, however, is not the only one to be caught by Japanese authorities having received a surgery altering their fingerprints to illegally gain entry into the country, Japan reports that eight others have been caught between January 2009 and October 2009 with the same or similar surgeries.

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In their investigation of a Chinese woman accused of credit card theft, Japanese police discovered that the woman had had her fingerprints surgically altered, according to an Epoch Time article. The woman, named Lin Xiuai, confessed to having a special clinic China perform the surgery to have her fingerprints changed for the equivalent of just under $4,500 due to wanting to enter Japan and having being arrested there in 2001 for suspicion of illegally entering the country. The surgery was successful enough that it enabled her to pass the biometric checkpoints at the airport.

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India’s Social Welfare Department has implemented the Beggars Personal Management System to track beggars using biometrics. This effort is to fight recent large-scale deaths and mismanagement within colonies, according to a Deccan Herald article.

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Ghana’s major electronic clearing and payment system could provide enough space and communication capabilities to enable adding new purposes for removing ghost payrollers, according to a Peace FM Online article.

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Versus announced that Avera McKennann University Hospital is expanding its real-time locating system to the hospitals new surgery center, scheduled to open July 2010.

Utilizing the Versus Advantages Clinic solution will enable Avera more efficient patient flow and communication to family members regarding patient status throughout the facility’s 28 private patient rooms and eight surgical suites.

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Integrated Biometrics was touting its light emitting sensing fingerprint biometrics at the ISC West show. Jim Seaborn, vice president of business development at Integrated Biometrics, talked about how the technology uses a different type of fingerprint sensor that is resistant to “spoofing,” or using a fake biometric to fool a scanner.

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Skeletal scanning technology developed at Wright State University could hold potential as a new biometric mode particularly effective in weeding out people of interest from crowds, according to an Ubergizmo article.

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