Twin sisters cheated border control dozens of times and flew to other countries using each other's documents

A pair of twin sisters in China changed their passports and IDs more than 30 times to travel abroad before they were caught, reports Insider.

Фото: Depositphotos

The Zhou sisters, from the northern Chinese city of Harbin, were arrested and are currently under investigation.

It all started when one of the sisters, Hong (a pseudonym given out by the authorities), wanted to go to Japan to be with her Japanese husband. However, her application for a visa to the country was repeatedly rejected.

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However, her twin Wei (also a pseudonym) had a valid Japanese visa, so Hong decided to take advantage of their similar looks and borrowed Wei's passport for her trip, according to Harbin Daily. Hong later used the same method to travel between China, Japan and Russia at least 30 times, police said.
Meanwhile, Wei used Hong's passport four times to travel to Thailand and "other countries".

Chinese authorities uncovered the scam earlier this year, though it's unclear how the ruse finally came to light. Both sisters returned to China in May.

The story blew up Chinese social media this week, with the hashtag "the twins exchanged identities and traveled abroad more than 30 times" garnering over 360 million views on the Twitter-like platform Weibo.

Comparing this story to the movie script, some Weibo users were in awe of how the twins managed to fool the immigration officers so many times.

“I always dreamed that my twin took school exams instead of me,” the user joked.

Many people also questioned the apparent lack of fingerprint checks at the borders. “Even the most advanced technology could not detect it. It's incredible, ”commented the user.

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Perhaps even more incredible is how this ploy took place in China, where the movements of citizens are closely monitored. In 2018, China's state-run People's Daily reported that the government's facial recognition technology could scan the faces of the country's 1,4 billion citizens in just one second.

Strict border controls have also been further tightened in recent months following the spread of several Covid outbreaks across the country.

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