About 1100 purple one-day passes and up to 200 10-ride multi-day passes have been seized and are expected to be used as evidence when the 28-year-old man appears in the Queenstown District Court on August 5 or 6.
Senior Constable Wayne Park, of Queenstown, said yesterday NZSki became aware on Tuesday someone was attempting to sell NZSki passes via the Lakes Weekly Bulletin, despite passes being non-transferable, non-refundable and legitimately sold only from NZSki.
NZSki transport manager Etienne Raubenheimer said yesterday he arranged to meet the seller in O'Connell's Shopping Centre, Queenstown, by calling the mobile telephone number in the advertisement.
The Englishman who met Mr Raubenheimer said he was selling the passes on behalf of a Malaysian man named ''James''.
Mr Raubenheimer, with plain-clothes police officers, arranged to meet ''James'' in the centre on Tuesday at 6pm.
A quantity of passes were found in the possession of ''James'' and the majority were found in his visitor accommodation, Snr Const Park said.
The amount of money ''James'' allegedly sought in payment for all the passes is believed to be $23,000.
It is understood passes from last year and passes from this year were used as templates for the forgeries in Malaysia or Singapore.
NZSki was working with official ski pass printing company Print Central to produce a definitive guide to spot fake passes and to make sure none got through, Mr Raubenheimer said.
Three individuals have presented counterfeit green passes to NZSki for use in the past month.
People were welcome to check the validity of their passes with NZSki, and would not get into trouble for doing so.
