The Metropolitan Police has unveiled an ongoing operation to clamp down on the production of fake identity documents in and around London.

The scheme, project Genesius, has seen 90 manufacturers and retailers of specialised printing equipment sign up to a voluntary code of practice, but officers in charge have not ruled out pushing for regulation of equipment sales.

Vendors joining the scheme agree to keep records on customers who buy specialised printing devices such as thermal card printers, and to profile potential customers in an effort to spot purchases being made on behalf of criminal gangs.

DCI Nick Downing said that the scheme have already received 400 pieces of intelligence from the printing trade and the police had “linked this intelligence to 14 separate criminal networks in London alone”.

He said the 90 signatories to the code of practice represented 70 per cent of the UK marketplace for the equipment in question, but that there were between 5,000 and 10,000 other vendors that occasionally sold equipment of potential use to counterfeiters that had not yet joined the scheme.

“I’d be lying if I said it had been easy to get 90 on board”, he said. “Should the industry be regulated? If we don’t get the five to 10 thousand outlets on board, do I have a choice but to press on with regulation? The jury’s still out.”

“We can’t wait much longer, though. The price of printers is going down – some companies will even give you the printer for nothing – what I don’t want to see is specialist printers on the shelves of Currys, PC World, Staples and so on”.

The police have warned that the market for fake identity documents in the UK is “massive”, with documents such as a National Insurance cards selling for as little as £50 and low-quality passports for around £500. Higher quality passports can cost more than £1,000.

DCI Downing said that although “you’d need a very high-quality document to pass our border controls”, lesser forgeries can be enough to trick police – whose cars do not have the capability to check the chips embedded in some modern passports – or staff in banks.

European identity cards are also commonly forged. “How many officers or bank clerks would be able to detect a fake Lithuanian Driver’s Licence? Very few,” he said.

Met police officers raiding illegal ID factories, often hidden in residential addresses, had seized more than 30,000 false identity documents, as well as tens of thousands of blank identity cards. One raid uncovered equipment valued at over £100,000 and £63,000 in cash in a factory hidden above a shop in Brixton, London.