KOTA KINABALU: Foreigners willing to pay up till RM1.3mil for a MyKad or a Malaysian passport should be aware that these are fake documents.

Commenting on a report in a Malay daily that a Sabah-based syndicate was charging RM1.3mil for citizenship and Malaysian passports, National Registration Department director-general Datuk Sulaiman Keling said the department had no records of such documents.

He said checks on the four MyKad printed in the newspaper on Monday revealed that they were not in the department's records.

"The MyKad is false and not issued by our department,’’ he said in a statement yesterday following a news report that three people, including a woman, were arrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) at a hotel here on Saturday.

"Our checks on the My Kad numbers, fingerprints and photographs did not appear in our system,’’ he said, adding that possession of such fake documents was an offence and those found guilty could be sentenced up to three years jail or fined up to RM20,000 or both

MACC, who have remanded two Sabahan men and a peninsular Malaysian woman, aged between 30 and 40, for five days are investigating possible links between the syndicate members and the NRD.

MACC sources said the syndicate members were targeting mainly businessmen from China who paid up to RM1.3mil to get a MyKad and a Malaysian passport.

"They charged each step of the way in the application process and it would cost about RM1.3mil for each client,’’ a source said, adding that it was still premature to release details of the ongoing investigations.

Berita Harian, in its report, said investigators suspected that the suspects had access to NRD system and also links to the company producing My Kad.

The report said that two of them were caught while taking fingerprints from a "client". Among the items seized were MyKad chips and thumbprint scanners. Amos Yee was sentenced to four weeks in prison on Monday afternoon.