He was a second class clerk in the Immigration Department and tonight Marcus Garcia is facing multiple charges for stealing 100 passports from the office. Garcia was the staffer in charge of printing bio data on the passports. He has been an employee for seven years.
Acting on a tip, police picked up Garcia at his Garza Avenue home in Belmopan on Tuesday night. The 39-year-old Garcia took them to his 24-year-old nephew Julian Garcia's home in Cayo where 95 passports were found in a lunch bag.
Today 39-year-old Marcus and 24-year-old Julian Garcia were charged for multiple counts of theft and handling stolen property. They were each offered bail of $50,000 and a surety in the same amount, but were unable to meet it and have been remanded.
Investigators believe that with his access to the machine-readable printing equipment, Garcia had set up a deal to sell the passports properly authorized. And while police take credit for cracking the high profile case, the deal credit rests with an anonymous tipster who called Director Carmen Zetina to tell him who had stolen them.
According to Zetina she told him she had been tormented with knowing about the scam for days, but just had to call after she heard the news that he would be leaving his office because of the missing passports.
