A corrupt civil servant from Earlsfield has been found guilty of forgery after vouching for seven men he did not know to fraudulently get them passports.

Former Colliers Wood Jobcentre Plus worker Charles Myton, of Siward Road, was convicted of knowingly countersigning seven fraudulent passport applications over a four-month period at Croydon Crown Court today.

Police say six of the men are still on the run.

Myton was arrested by detectives from the Met's Maxim passport investigation team in June last year after an international police investigation codenamed Operation Kildare.

He was found to have countersigned passport applications for seven complete strangers in 2003, claiming he had known them as friends for three years.

Ten-year passports were issued to the seven men - named by police as Walters, Driscoll, Bishop, Woolley, Thompson, Taylor and Hales.

So far only one has been caught. Walters was really Jamaican national Philbert Williams who was picked up by American immigration trying to enter New York on the fraudulent passport.

Fingerprint checks showed his real identity and he was deported to Jamaica.

Myton's conviction follows that of another Department of Work and Pensions worker, Valentina Costley, who was sentenced at Croydon Crown Court on August 2 to two years and two months jail for falsely completing and countersigning 12 fraudulent passport applications.

In an investigation unrelated to Myton's, Costley, 43, from Deptford, fabricated false names and addresses, which she completed on the passport application and then countersigned them for eight people.

Police found one of the false passports, in the name of Powell, in a raid on a flat in Nash House, Poynders Road, Clapham, in June last year.

Powell was later found to be Andre Craig Smith, a Jamaican national who had paid Costley for one passport in the name of Powell, and another in the name of Phillips, as well as a replacement passport after claiming the first one was lost.

He was picked up by American immigration authorities twice - once arriving at New York's JFK airport as Phillips and then again posing as Powell on a train crossing the border from Canada.

Also found in the flat raid was a wedding photo connecting Smith to Kevan Moscoe, another man who obtained two passports from Costley.

Newspaper cuttings found in the Nash House flat said Moscoe had been murdered in Jamaica in December 2003 after being stabbed 13 times.

Costley also countersigned a passport application for a woman arrested in Herne Hill.

In a raid in Herne Hill in May last year, police arrested Latoya Ann Marie Denniston for being in possession of a passport obtained through identity theft.

Denniston was later found to have obtained a false passport countersigned by Costley in the name of Chipchase.

Denniston pleaded guilty in June and was convicted of fraudulent possession of the passport, driving licences and birth certificates. She was jailed for eight months for possession of the passport with five months to run concurrently for the fraudulently obtained driving licence and fraudulent use of the birth certificates.

Detective Chief Inspector John Kielty, head of the Met's Operation Maxim, said: "As both this case and that of Valentina Costley have shown, there are far reaching consequences to unlawfully signing passport applications.

"No one should be left in any doubt, that countersigning one is a serious responsibility and unless you have genuinely known the person applying for the passport for at least three years you could be liable to 10 years' imprisonment if this leads to a fraudulently obtained passport.

"In both cases of Charles Myton and Valentina Costley, no regard was given to the criminal background of those being issued with a passport yet they signed the fraudulent application to help this person live anonymously and illegally in the UK or US."

A date has not been set for Myton's sentencing.