An African man has been jailed after he tried to use a Dutchman's stolen passport to get a British driving licence.
Officials at the DVLA became suspicious because of "obvious differences" between the photo which Ivory Coast-born Jean Raim submitted and that on the Dutch passport.
They alerted police who raided Raim's home in Exeter, Devon, and found he also had someone else's French identity documents.
Poultry factory worker Raim, 42, of Priory Road, Exeter, admitted using someone else's passport for a criminal purpose and having false identity papers and was jailed for eight months at Exeter Crown Court.
Judge Erik Salomonsen told him: "Essentially, this is a fraud aggravated by the fact that passports are treated as items of respect and are documents of the greatest value to their owners.
"Their fraudulent use must be dealt with by a prison sentence so those who observe what happened to you will be deterred from using false identity documents."
David Bowen, prosecuting, said Raim was born in the Ivory Coast but moved to France as a boy and it a French citizen and as such is entitled to live and work in Britain.
He said in April the DVLA received an application for a UK driving licence in the name of a Dutch man and accompanied by his passport and driving licence.
Staff became suspicious and checks showed they had been reported missing or stolen in 2011. Police also found a French woman's identity card in Raim's laptop bag.
He told police he had bought the Dutch passport for cash from a man in Paris the previous year.
Jeremy Wickham, defending, said Raim had spent most of his life working in the kitchens of Paris restaurants but moved to Devon last year and started work at a chicken factory.
At first he got a lift from Exeter to Cullompton with another worker but was moved to a different shift and needed his own licence.
Mr Wickham said:"He had not passed his driving test in this country and therefore made use of the documents. He did not want to drive without insurance and so committed a much more serious offence.
"Fortunately the people at the DVLA noticed an obvious dissimilarity between the photo he sent in and that in the Netherlands passport. This was not a particularly sophisticated offence."
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