Hyderabad: The New Zealand visa scam involving agents from Hyderabad and elsewhere in India is growing big. The number of agents under the scanner in the New Zealand visa scam has been increasing.
Immigration NZ Mumbai area office’s latest report says the number of fraud cases in 2016 is 640 involving 300 agents. The scam initially pertaining to fraudulent education loans has now expanded with new frauds like fraudulent work experience and fake degree certificates being found.
According to an Immigration NZ Mumbai Area Office Report obtained under the Official Information Act by the Labour Party the total number of scams had grown from 75 cases involving 60 agents in April to 640 by August 2016. Officials said agents who are blacklisted are coming out with new names. At least 15 educational institutions in NZ have received these fake documents.
The latest report of Immigration NZ Mumbai Area Office says the bank documents fraud include recycling bank documents, mismatch of KYC documents, forged bank documents, loan closed post disbursement, forged loan disbursal letters and discrepancies in the loan letter.
The report says, “Fraud detection has improved with more frauds found during these two weeks. One case involved a fraudulently altered IELTS certificate with inflated sub scores given to educational institutions presumably by the agent to obtain the offer of place. Then they lodged an application with the genuine IELTS which had two sub scores at 5.0 which is below the minimum required. The fraud was uncovered when asked why they issued the offer of place to someone who did not meet the minimum IELTS score and it transpired that the two documents did not align.”
Around 150 students, mostly from Hyderabad, were served deportation letters as an organised financial document fraud was detected regarding students send by Hyderabad agents.
