A SOUTHAMPTON restaurant owner facing a big fine after being caught employing five illegal workers says she is the victim of a fake ID scam.

Isabel Chung, who runs the Zen Bar and Restaurant in Below Bar, warned other restaurant owners that they too could be unwittingly employing illegal immigrants.

Ms Chung – who has lived in Southampton for 21 years – could now be hit with a fine of up to £50,000, which she says would leave her bankrupt.

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) raided the Japanese restaurant last week after a tip-off from a member of the public.

Immigration officers arrested four Chinese men, two failed asylum seekers and two illegal entrants, and a woman who was also working illegally.

Ms Chung said she would never knowingly hire illegal workers and believed that the restaurant had carried out the correct rightto- work checks on its staff.

She said all of the illegal workers, who had been working in her kitchen for several months, had produced Asylum Registrations Cards (ARC) as proof they could work in the UK when applying for the jobs.

However, officers told her that the IDs – which are supposed to be only issued by the Government – had been forged and that nine out of ten asylum cards were fakes.

“It is the same card I have seen many times before and it looked no different, the photograph quality was unbelievable,” said Ms Chung.

“I thought I was prepared for a visit. I felt like I had done my homework by keeping photocopies of the identification documents of my staff,” she said.

“But we were never informed that we needed to telephone the Home Office to check if the ID is genuine. It is a step that is missing and I am going to be fined heavily because of this missing step.”

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said the mitigating circumstances would be taken into account when deciding the size of the fine.

Three illegal workers were discovered at Zen in October 2006, but Ms Chung said this was before she took control of the restaurant.