Undercover US agents were still able to obtain passports despite filling in fraudulent applications, according to government investigators.

Three out of seven passports applied for in the secret investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)'s fraud investigation team were approved, raising doubts about security procedures at the State Department's passport office.

The news was revealed by Greg Kutz, head of the GAO's fraud investigation team, at a congressional hearing on Thursday. This is the second year in a row a GAO investigation has been able to fraudulently obtain passports - last year four passports were successfully obtained in a similar test.

Fake Passports

GAO agents applied for seven passports using bogus applications, including the documents of a dead man and an application by a 62-year-old accompanied by a Social Security number only issued last year. Five applications were initially approved. Two were later detected by passport officials as bogus, but three of the passports were fully approved and mailed out to the undercover team.

"While there were multiple indicators of fraud and identity theft in each application, State identified only two as fraudulent and mailed five genuine US passports to undercover GAO mailboxes," Kutz said.

Passport Fraud

Kutz said the results of their test reveals "significant vulnerabilities and systemic issues" within the State Department office at successfully detecting passport fraud. He credited the Department for having improved procedures since the 2009 test, but said being able to fraudulently obtain passports for the second time in as many years shows there is a still a major problem. "State's passport issuance process continues to be vulnerable to fraud as the agency issued five of the seven passports GAO attempted to fraudulently obtain," Kutz added.

For their part, the State Department has recognised the issue, saying they need extra enforcement powers that override privacy controls to help them detect passport fraud. Brenda Sprague, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security: "Our efforts to gain access to information are hampered because [consular affairs] is not considered a law-enforcement entity for information-sharing purposes. We need this designation."