Halifax man helped thousands pretend they were in Canada to get around citizenship rules

2016/01/16 Leave a comment

Good detailed account of citizenship application fraud and how it worked (in the overall context, CIC data suggests that the percentage is low – see “Protecting Canadian Citizenship” – Citizenship Fraud Update – Numbers Still Small). Sentence appears small in relation to the scale of the fraud committed:

If anyone dialed the Halifax phone number Mohd Morelley wrote in his application for citizenship as proof he was integrating in Canada, it would ring out in an office on the outskirts of Halifax. Someone might answer, but it wouldn’t be Morelley or his wife or three children, who all wanted to be Canadians.

They were all living in Kuwait.

Along with the bogus phone number, Morelley and his family bought a full-service bogus citizenship package from an immigration consultant, including a Halifax address for a home he never lived in, tax returns and employment records for a job he never held, payment of utility bills he never used, ATM withdrawals to show local transactions he didn’t make and a letter from a local Islamic society saying he was deeply involved in the activities at a mosque he didn’t attend.

Morelley’s phantom phone — and fake life — were far from unique: more than 140 cell phones, labeled with the number and name of a client, were organized in the Bedford Highway office of the Canadian Commercial Group, run by immigration consultant Hassan Al-Awaid.

At least 1,244 clients were listed in Al-Awaid’s files, most accompanied by family members.

And he is but one of several crooked consultants caught recently peddling easy ways around the residency (and other) requirements for foreigners to gain Canadian citizenship.

Here is how they did it.

Hassan Al-Awaid, 62, an Iraqi national, worked in public relations and marketing for a government-owned petrochemical company in Kuwait before immigrating to Canada in 1992 and settling in Nova Scotia, where he and his wife had three children, including twin girls.

He might have once been a legitimate immigration consultant when he started, at least as far back as 1997. He was a member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants until he was suspended in 2006. And he didn’t join the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council, Canada’s current regulatory body, making him another “ghost consultant,” working in the shadows.

Increasingly, Al-Awaid shifted to black market services and relied on referrals from clients, since his specialization was hard to advertise.

“My office is one of the famous offices in Nova Scotia and my services differ from any other office, especially after arrival, and everyone know that,” he boasted in an email to a client.

…Al-Awaid’s furtive and sometimes frantic business began to unravel in 2007, when Shawna Woodin, an intelligence officer with the Canada Border Services Agency in Halifax, noticed two different signatures for the same person in a citizenship application.

The CBSA and the RCMP started a lengthy investigation. Several of his clients confessed to investigators of the duplicity. Searches in 2010 at Al-Awaid’s office, home and car revealed his meticulous record keeping.

Police found more than 140 labelled cell phones and a stack of ATM cards with their PINs among the 20 filing cabinets of records seized, including reams of emails with clients and detailed records.

He was arrested in 2011

Al-Awaid eventually pleaded guilty to eight offences under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and ten under the Citizenship Act, for cases stretching from 2002 to 2011.

At his sentencing this summer, court heard he was being treated for hypertension, hypothyroidism, elevated cholesterol, gout and diabetes.

“I am simply not satisfied that the Correctional Service of Canada can safely and effectively monitor and treat Mr. Al-Awaid’s very significant health issues,” provincial court of Nova Scotia judge Anne Derrick said.

That allowed him to avoid jail, instead getting a conditional sentence of two years less a day, a $4,000 fine and 240 hours of community service.

Prosecutors lamented the growing presence of citizenship fraud.

“That these ‘address of convenience’ cases went from virtually unheard of a short number of years ago to making regular appearances in news reports across Canada is indicative that the scheme has served to foster an overseas industry that thrives on immigration fraud,” prosecutors Timothy McLaughlin and Ronda Vanderhoek told court.

For the charges against Al-Awaid, police focused on 53 clients who used eight Halifax addresses to falsify residency. Of those 53, seven provided states to police; nine of the applicants had already obtained their citizenship, 19 withdrew from the process, while the rest were still in the application process at the time his case went to court.

Source: Halifax man helped thousands pretend they were in Canada to get around citizenship rules

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Douglas Todd: Immigration fraud on a grand scale

2015/11/23 Leave a comment

Douglas Todd on the recent immigration fraud trial and verdict (while fraud and misrepresentation need to be countered, the overall number in percentage terms is small – see earlier “Protecting Canadian Citizenship” – Citizenship Fraud Update – Numbers Still Small):

[Judge] Harris could not find another Canadian immigration scam that matched “the scale of that perpetrated by Mr. Wang,” a former insurance agent and father of two who previously had no criminal record.

In determining Wang’s sentence, the judge took into account the punishments meted out in a range of earlier migration scams.

One case involved a man who imported 6,000 fake Alberta drivers’ licences. Another Ontario man filed 150 tax returns falsely claiming his clients lived in Canada, so they could obtain child-tax credits.

A woman in another case counselled au pairs on more than 100 occasions to lie to work in Canada. A B.C. woman was convicted of 16 counts of “arranging sham marriages between Chinese nationals and Canadians.” An Ontario duo arranged impostors to take English-proficiency tests for would-be immigrants with no ability in the language.

But how could Wang have pulled off a covert scheme involving more than 1,000 illicit would-be immigrants for eight years?

Barry Cartwright, senior lecturer in Simon Fraser University’s criminology department, said immigration fraud is “hard to catch. It’s expensive. It’s time consuming. And it’s resource-consuming.”

Even though Cartwright is not aware of a criminal case as extensive as Wang’s, the immigration specialist said he knows of larger questionable schemes involving loopholes in the immigration policies of Ottawa and Quebec, especially those to do with investor-class immigrants.

While Cartwright doesn’t want to take away from the value of Canada welcoming what he estimated to be the “nine out of 10” immigrants who end up contributing to the country, he said it’s difficult for officials to carefully screen applicants when “you’re bringing in almost 300,000 immigrants a year, or 25,000 refugees in two months.”

At his sentencing hearing, Wang’s lawyer argued his client’s punishment should be lenient since there was no “breach of trust.” The lawyer said the people who enlisted Wang’s services did so with “their eyes wide open.”

The judge, however, countered that Wang did not mastermind “victimless” crimes. The innocent children of his clients, he noted, could now be deported.

The judge also suggested the country’s entire immigration and taxation systems were victims of Wang’s elaborate cheating.

Wang’s subterfuge, Harris said, undermines whatever confidence Canadians have in the immigration process and is keenly relevant to “today’s age of international terrorism” and people smuggling.

In weighing Wang’s contributions to mass tax avoidance, Harris quoted Supreme Court Justice Peter Cory, who maintained the vast majority of Canadians who pay income tax by way of payroll deduction have little or no opportunity for evasion.

“Those who do evade the payment of income tax not only cheat the state of what is owing to it, but inevitably increase the burden placed upon the honest taxpayers. It is ironic that those who evade payment of taxes think nothing of availing themselves of the innumerable services which the state provides by means of taxes collected from others.”

In further justifying Wang’s seven-year sentence, Harris quoted B.C. Appeal Court Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein, who said those who facilitate illegal migrants into Canada put an “astronomical cost” on the Canadian taxpayer, “fuel racial prejudice and racial tension” and “adversely impact all aspects of Canadian society.”

Even though Wang pleaded guilty, he has launched an appeal of his jail sentence.

Source: Douglas Todd: Immigration fraud on a grand scale

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Richmond man, Xun Wang, gets 7 years behind bars for illegal immigration scheme

2015/10/26 Leave a comment

Likely one of the more egregious examples of immigration fraud:

A Richmond, B.C., man who made millions helping hundreds of people file fraudulent immigration applications was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined more than $900,000 in provincial court today.

Crown prosecutor Jessica Patterson said Xun Wang, 46, received two fines — one for $187,000 and one for $730,000 — and she said the prison term will be reduced by several months for time already served.

Patterson said the judge “intended to send a message that these kinds of activities are not going to be tolerated.”

“He clearly picked up on the large scale of this operation and the scope of it. It occurred over a number of years and was very sophisticated and very planned, and that appears to be the reason,” said Patterson outside the Vancouver provincial courthouse on Friday morning.

Profitable enterprise

According to court records Wang ran two profitable but unlicensed immigration consulting businesses in Vancouver from 2006 to 2014 called New Can Consultants Ltd. and Wellong International Investments Ltd.

After he was arrested last year, the married father of two pleaded guilty to 15 charges, including illegal immigration consulting, misrepresentation, forgery, fraud, illegally obtaining tax credits and tax evasion.

Wang’s profitable enterprises included creating fake Chinese passports and misrepresenting clients so it would appear they have Canadian addresses and phone numbers when they actually lived in China.

Wang admitted in court that he took these steps in order to create the fictitious appearance of Canadian residency for his clients so they could maintain permanent resident status and obtain Canadian citizenship.

Business records showed up to 1,200 people paid $10 million for Wang’s services. Patterson said it was not yet clear what measures the Canada Border Services Agency would take to follow up on the 1,200 potentially fraudulent immigration applications.

Seven people who worked for Wang were charged in the case. Five are set to appear in court next month. Two are wanted on outstanding warrants.

Source: Richmond man, Xun Wang, gets 7 years behind bars for illegal immigration scheme – British Columbia – CBC News

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Overstating Citizenship “Fraud” – New Canadian Media

2014/07/18 2 Comments

Citizenship Fraud.037My take on citizenship fraud, with analysis of released numbers to date:

Some may argue that any fraud is unacceptable.

But the quest for perfection has to be balanced with the realities of efficient management and good service delivery.

There are more fraud issues with citizens originating in certain countries, both in terms of country of birth and likely country of application. From a risk management perspective, that is where the focus should be and likely is.

As the government addresses the backlog and implements the new Citizenship Act, we will see starting in 2016 whether it has achieved a reasonable balance between reduced fraud, efficiency, and accessibility of citizenship, meeting the Minister’s commitment of a one-year processing time.

Overstating “Fraud” – New Canadian Media – NCM.

Methodological Note: A number of readers have asked regarding the source of the numbers and analysis:

  • An ATIP request provided to me by a student listed the countries of birth for the 3,194 investigations;
  • Beyond the fact that this number was as of 31 March 2012, no details on which years were included (i.e., did all the cases of suspected misrepresentation pertain to citizenship applications in one year or, as I suspect, a number of years);
  • Other numbers were pieced together from public statements and communications material from the past few years. I integrated as best I could;
  • the percentage figures were calculated against the 5 year annual average of new citizens (2008-12);
  • I asked CIC to confirm and update these numbers. CIC declined, suggesting I file an ATIP request and sending along some communications material.

 

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