Section 269/8: Forging a passport
Statutory text (Thai original)
ผู้ใดทำหนังสือเดินทางปลอมขึ้นทั้งฉบับหรือแต่ส่วนหนึ่งส่วนใด เติมหรือตัดทอนข้อความ หรือแก้ไขด้วยประการใด ๆ ในหนังสือเดินทางที่แท้จริง หรือประทับตราปลอมหรือลงลายมือชื่อปลอมในหนังสือเดินทาง โดยประการที่น่าจะเกิดความเสียหายแก่ผู้อื่นหรือประชาชน ถ้าได้กระทำเพื่อให้ผู้หนึ่งผู้ใดหลงเชื่อว่าเป็นหนังสือเดินทางที่แท้จริง ผู้นั้นกระทำความผิดฐานปลอมหนังสือเดินทาง ต้องระวางโทษจำคุกตั้งแต่หนึ่งปีถึงสิบปี และปรับตั้งแต่สองหมื่นบาทถึงสองแสนบาท
English translation
Whoever makes a false passport in whole or in part, adds to or removes text, or alters by any means a genuine passport, or affixes a false seal or signs a false signature on a passport, in a manner likely to cause damage to another person or to the public, if the act is done in order to make any person believe that it is a genuine passport, commits the offence of forging a passport and shall be liable to imprisonment from one year to ten years and a fine from twenty thousand baht to two hundred thousand baht.
ThaiLawOnline translation, written from the Thai original and verified
Firm annotation
Section 269/8 opens the passport group of the forgery chapter and is drafted on the same template as Section 264, with passport substituted for document. Passport is defined in Section 1(15) and the definition is wide in three ways that matter: it covers a passport issued by the Thai Government, by any foreign government, or by an international organisation, so forging a foreign passport in Thailand is an offence under Thai law; it includes documents used in place of a passport, such as a travel document or certificate of identity; and it expressly includes a blank passport form not yet filled in with the holder's particulars, which is what makes possession of stolen blank booklets prosecutable. The elements otherwise track Section 264: a forging act, a manner likely to cause damage, and the intent to make a person believe the passport is genuine. The penalty is far heavier than ordinary document forgery, one to ten years with a mandatory fine, matching the top tier in Section 266. Sections 269/9 to 269/11 deal with use, sale, cross border movement, and the unauthorised use of a genuine passport.
Why this matters in practice
For foreign residents this is one of the most consequential provisions in the Code, because a conviction ends any prospect of a Thai visa or extension and normally results in deportation and blacklisting after the sentence. The one year minimum with a mandatory fine means a fine only outcome is not available. Two situations arise repeatedly: altering the details or photograph in an otherwise genuine passport, which is squarely within this Section rather than the lighter Section 269/11, and buying a passport from an agent, where the purchaser is usually charged under Section 269/9 for use or possession while the agent faces this Section. Anyone offered a passport service that does not go through an embassy or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should treat it as criminal.
Cited in 2 Supreme Court decisions (2017 to 2021)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 3540/2560 (2017)
- Decision 1105/2564 (2021)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics. How we count these, and what we measured
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Penal Code, s. 269/8 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Penal Code (Thailand), s. 269/8. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-269-8/ (accessed 8 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.อ. มาตรา 269/8 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-269-8/ -
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<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-269-8/"><p>Whoever makes a false passport in whole or in part, adds to or removes text, or alters by any means a genuine passport, or affixes a false seal or signs a false signature on a passport, in a manner likely to cause damage to another…</p><footer>Penal Code, s. 269/8 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-269-8/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.