A Canberra plumber used his colleague's passport to board a plane in Melbourne bound for Turkey months after authorities cancelled his Australian travel permit.
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Timothy Joel Douglas, 29, handed over his passport after Emre Faruk Yavuz convinced him his overseas family was in trouble and he needed to "get away".
Police swooped on Douglas' Charnwood home in April when they recognised Yavuz, 28, in security images at Melbourne International Airport last year.
Douglas was charged with providing another person with Australian travel documents and pleaded guilty.
Government travel records showed flights from Melbourne to Istanbul, via Singapore, had been booked in his name online through travel agents in Russia and Eastern Europe on September 11.
They also stated a man, believed to be Yavuz, used Douglas' passport when he checked in and signed his outgoing passenger card at the airport two days later.
Yavuz boarded a Singapore Airlines flight bound for Malaysia and flew out of the country that night. His fate is unknown.
Police who searched Douglas's home seized a mobile phone, passport cover, passport-sized photos and an Australia Post EFTPOS receipt for $250 from July 2015.
A police statement of facts tendered in the ACT Magistrates Court revealed the ruse began less than a year after authorities revoked Yavuz's Australian passport in May 2014.
Douglas said the pair became friends when they worked as plumbers on building sites across Canberra from October that year.
He understood Yavuz was Turkish, recalling other colleagues had called him "the Turk", and a practising Muslim.
Douglas said Yavuz seemed "pretty religious" and often listened to readings from the Koran and went to Friday prayer.
Yavuz claimed his brother was in trouble and he needed to get away before he asked Douglas if he could use his passport.
Douglas was wary at first but later agreed, warning Yavuz that he wanted it back before March this year.
Yavuz told him he shouldn't worry and he'd be "better off not knowing" what it would be used for, court documents said.
A few weeks later, Douglas applied for a new passport and paid $250 to submit his application at Kippax post office.
He collected it soon after and debated whether he should give the document to Yavuz as he was growing concerned his identity could be stolen or his bank accounts cleared out.
But he told police his good nature got the better of him and he'd swapped the passport for $250 cash when he next saw Yavuz.
Yavuz reminded him to keep quiet and Douglas vowed he wouldn't tell anyone about the exchange.
That was the last time Douglas saw his friend, and the last he saw of his passport, the statement of facts said.
His defence lawyer Peter Woodhouse, of Ben Aulich and Associates, said in court Douglas had, by his own admission, been "a fool".
He said Douglas was a decent and kind-hearted man whom Yavuz had targeted and taken advantage of when he fed him false information about his need for the passport.
Mr Woodhouse pressed for a non-conviction order, noting Douglas had made frank admissions to police, cooperated with the investigation and pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.
The federal prosecutor argued Douglas had been well-aware Yavuz was going to use his passport to travel and there was a need for general deterrence.
Magistrate Robert Cook acknowledged Douglas had been the subject of a "sting" so Yavuz could travel to Turkey but said his actions, given he knew he was committing an offence, were "extremely foolish".
Douglas was convicted and fined $1000.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade would not be drawn on Yavuz's fate and said he was unable to comment on individual passport-related matters for privacy reasons.
