QUARTERLY FRAUD SUMMARY - NAIROBI

UNCLAS NAIROBI 003733 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPT FOR AF/CA DEPT FOR CA/FPP PASS TO KCC PASS TO INL/HSTC POSTS FOR FRAUD PREVENTION MANAGERS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KFRD CVIS CPAS CMGT ASEC KCRM KE SUBJECT: QUARTERLY FRAUD SUMMARY - NAIROBI REF: A. NAIROBI 2782, B. NAIROBI 2509, C. NAIROBI 1650, D. NAIROBI 817, E. NAIROBI 740, F. 05 STATE 205073, G. 05 NAIROBI 4523, H. 05 NAIROBI 3627 ¶1. (U) Summary. The following report replies to Ref F reinstitution of the quarterly fraud report covering the current condition of consular fraud in Kenya, with specific reference to fraud trends in non-immigrant visa, immigrant visa, and diversity visa applications as well as cases of American Citizen Services, adoption, and passport fraud. Other areas covered include cooperation with the host government, and areas of particular concern. The review concludes with an overview of FPU staffing and training. End Summary. -------------- COUNTRY CONDITIONS -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Post's fraud environment remains complicated, as outlined in Ref D. However, Nairobi has made great strides towards addressing organized fraud and significant fraud trends as described in Ref B and C. Post continues to implement anti-fraud measures to combat IV and DV fraud, and in the busy season for NIV student applicants, Nairobi has successfully used the CCD text search function to combat F1 sponsorship fraud. -------------- --- NIV FRAUD - STUDENT VISA FRAUD AND TEXT SEARCHES -------------- --- ¶3. (U) Nairobi's most common fraud involves students applying to schools in the U.S. who supply fake Kenyan National Exam Council (KNEC) high school certificates and fraudulent bank documents in support of their applications. While in the past, fraudulent KNEC certificates have been of poor quality, post has recently detected washed certificates with grades that have been expertly "revised" by a local counterfeiter. Nairobi maintains a good working relationship with the KNEC who directly supplies Post with confidential copies of high school certificates, which has so far SIPDIS proved to be our best failsafe. ¶4. (U) In the past several months, Nairobi has moved away from relying on documentation produced by applicants in support of their financial status. Post recognizes that many prospective students cannot pay for even the first year of university in the U.S, and that bank documents in Kenya are particularly prone to fraud. F1 ;applicants often purchase legitimate bank documents and make the claim that the owner of the statement is their aunt or uncle. When asked to return with these relatives to help establish a relationship, applicants either do not produce the relative or employ stand-ins who submit fake national identification cards, claiming that the bank statements are their own. ¶5. (SBU) In order to stop reuse of bank documents among student applicants, Post has now implemented an SOP for F1 applicants in which the sponsor's name is written into the case notes. Officers then run the sponsor names as text searches in CCD. After building a database for several weeks, Post continues to have great success detecting bank statements that are being reused by applicants all claiming that the aunt or uncle is sponsoring them. Carrying out the additional text searches adds negligible time to the interview and provides strong justifications for refusals. Post's newly arrived Consul General intends to expand our relationship with local banking executives in order to combat bank fraud. ¶6. (SBU) Thanks to several independent confidential informants (CIs) post has begun to develop a case against an "overseas education consultant" with offices in the U.S. and Kenya which appears to be complicit in sponsorship fraud. CIs and a recent student applicant have confirmed that for a fee of approximately $400, the consultant works with local bank officers to temporarily transfer money into sponsors' accounts to show sufficient financial support. A U.S.-based CI states that this same organization helps Kenyans who are in the U.S. withot status to apply for schools for their children for a fee of $10,000, which likely includes university applications, interview coaching, and inflation of sponsor bank statements. The fraud unit will continue to work with Post's A/RSO-I to build a case against the agency. -------------- IV FRAUD - SOMALIS' TRUE IDENTITIES UNKNOWN -------------- ¶7. (U) Nairobi continues to encounter IV relationship fraud, particularly in IR1 petitions for ethnic Somali applicants. Often, the petitioner will have immigrated to the U.S. years before, often as a refugee, and returned once for a marriage which went wholly undocumented other than a marriage certificate usually issued from Kenya. The cases are marked by virtually no evidence of a relationship due to the largely oral nature of Somali culture. While the volume of fraudulent Somali documents, including passports, is large, all official Somali documents are unverifiable because Somalia has not had a central government since 1991. Forgeries continue to be commonplace, our fraud investigator procured a Somali passport for himself listing a colleague as his mother. There is virtually no difference between what we believe is the genuine article and forgeries. Finally, the current political situation continues to prohibit in-country consular investigations and hampers our ability to make civil society contacts there. ¶8. (SBU) Post remains deeply concerned that for most Somali applicants, their true identity remains unknown throughout the immigration process. Post has begun to suspect that some ethnic Somalis are concealing basic their basic identity, including name, date of birth, and in some cases nationality (further information to be provided septel). Nairobi now counsels IV applicants who are undocumented Somalis resident in Kenya to seek registration as aliens in Kenya so they can obtain genuine Police Certificates of Good Conduct (PCGC),as these are often the only officially recognized documents in their files. Ethnic Somalis' unwillingness to become documented in Kenya and in turn their inability to seek genuine PCGCs is a stumbling block for many otherwise qualified IV applicants. -------------- DV FRAUD - OPERATION GHOST MARRIAGE UPDATE -------------- ¶9. (SBU) Ref B reports on arrests and disruption of a significant DV fraud ring. The fraud ring matched principal applicants and paying customers in sham marriages in an attempt to traffic their clients as dependent spouses. Following the June arrest of almost 80 applicants and members of the fraud ring, Nairobi assisted Kenyan Police in carrying out detailed investigations on each relationship. At the conclusion of nearly two weeks of field investigations led by the Fraud Unit's Investigations Assistant and an RSO Investigator in conjunction with the Criminal Investigations Division, we were able to determine that all but one relationship was conclusively fraudulent. The fraud was pervasive in Western Kenya, and the ring appears to have worked with complicit local officials, further details to be provided septel. -------------- ACS and PASSPORT FRAUD -------------- ¶10. (U) Nairobi continues to encounter fraudulent cases of naturalized Amcits, often Somali-Americans, attempting to register children born in the region as their own. Other fraud originates with Somali-Americans seeking to renew passports for older children who do not resemble the biometric information on the passports they hold. Post also continues to work with Kenyan Immigration to root out human trafficking of Somalis through Nairobi by Amcit Somalis who, for a fee, send their passports back to Kenya for use by look-alike impostors. The A/RSO-I has implemented a training program to fill the void left by the departure of Post's DHS Customs and Border Patrol representative. Nairobi's A/RSO-I continues to liaise with airline and airport authorities who consistently catch "look-alike" fraud. In a recent case, A Somali-American attempted to smuggler a Somali national on her daughter's U.S. Passport. Nairobi continues to be a transit point for African and Asian human smugglers with destinations in Europe and the U.S. -------------- ADOPTION FRAUD MINIMAL -------------- ¶11. (U) Post believes that due to the efforts of the GoK to maintain the legitimacy of the adoption process, we have seen very little adoption fraud involving Kenyan applicants. Adoptions have nearly ground to a halt in Kenya, as government officials are currently in the process of reviewing and updating Kenyan adoption regulations, which have significantly reduced the number of adoptions in Kenya. Due to this review, the Kenyan Department of Children's Services has suspended all authorization of IR-4 petitions in which adoptions are completed by prospective parents in the U.S. Post continues to process adoption cases for the region. -------------- ASSISTING USCIS -------------- ¶12. (U) Post's fraud unit continues to act as a resource for domestic USCIS investigators attempting to verify documents for Kenyans attempting to change status in the U.S.. The majority of document verification requests we receive are fraudulent divorce decrees. Nairobi notes with concern that documents "certified" by the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA),office of State Counsel, Legal Division often turn out to be fraudulent. Post is taking this issue up with the MFA in an effort to improve the credibility of these verifications. -------------- STAFFING AND TRAINING -------------- ¶13. (U) The FPU unit includes one full-time FSN, Francis Marawoshe, and three back-up FSNs with collateral duties. Due to significant staffing shortages in NIV, the fraud unit remains thinly staffed. Post plans to transition Mercy Duro to spending at least 20 percent of her time in the fraud unit and continue her training such that she is fully conversant in all anti-fraud functions. The current Fraud Prevention Manager with collateral duties is Etienne LeBailly, who received FPM training in December 2005. Post also has an A/RSO-I. RANNEBERGER