Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06NAIROBI817
2006-02-23 12:20:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Embassy Nairobi
Cable title:  

QUARTERLY FRAUD SUMMARY - NAIROBI

Tags:  KFRD CVIS CPAS CMGT ASEC KCRM KE 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXYZ0007
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHNR #0817/01 0541220
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 231220Z FEB 06
FM AMEMBASSY NAIROBI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 9808
INFO RUEHPNH/NVC PORTSMOUTH 0253
RUEHAE/AMEMBASSY ASMARA 4765
RUEHDS/AMEMBASSY ADDIS ABABA 8219
RUEHLGB/AMEMBASSY KIGALI 4290
RUEHKI/AMEMBASSY KINSHASA 1679
UNCLAS NAIROBI 000817 

SIPDIS

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 740, B. 05 STATE 205073, C. 05 NAIROBI 4523

D. 05 NAIROBI 3627

UNCLAS NAIROBI 000817

SIPDIS

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 740, B. 05 STATE 205073, C. 05 NAIROBI 4523

D. 05 NAIROBI 3627


1. (U) Summary. The following report replies to Ref B
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) Kenya is a high-fraud post with many ACS and visa
cases involving alien smuggling through marriage and
relationship fraud. Fraud is widely committed by applicants
and runs the gamut from identity and relationship fraud to
document falsification including passport, marriage and
birth certificate, national identification card, and police
certificates. The fraud situation is made more complex
because genuine documents are also obtainable by fraudulent
means. Fraud is driven by an intense pressure on
applicants to leave Kenya and its roughly 60 percent
unemployment rate. Further, a large percentage of
relatively desperate third-country nationals enter Kenya's
porous borders and contribute to the prevalence of fraud,
which flourishes in Kenya due in part to rampant corruption
throughout the government and law enforcement, combined
with prosecution that remains relatively soft on identity
fraud. Nonetheless, Post believes that the majority of
fraud encountered is not sophisticated and usually
relatively easy to intercept, particularly since the advent
of fingerprinting. The only current evidence of a
relatively sophisticated organized fraud ring has become
apparent among applicants for Diversity Visas. Post has
also detected some evidence of organized immigration fraud.
Nairobi's aggressive anti-terrorism efforts include meeting
regularly with local authorities about passport

reliability, and working closely with other diplomatic
missions and neighboring posts to identify fraud trends and
to launch public outreach campaigns.

--------------
NIV FRAUD
--------------


3. (U) Nairobi's NIV fraud is generally not organized and
usually easily detectable. Post sees a very small number
of employment-based petitions. Current fraud concerns for
employment-based petitions are largely focused on Kenyans
of South Asian-descent applying for L1 intra-company
transfers to dubious or non-existent "subsidiaries" in the
U.S.


4. (U) The 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 applicants. The fraudulent
certificates are generally of poor quality and easily
obtainable; however, post has a good working relationship
with the KNEC who directly supplies Post with confidential
copies of high school certificates. Post's Fraud
Prevention Unit (FPU) pays particular concern to cases in
which there are indications of terrorist or criminal
activity and investigates them carefully.


5. (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
bank documents in Kenya are particularly fraud-prone and in
some cases employees at the bank are complicit in the
fraud. In the case of F1 applicants, students 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.
These fraudulent national identification cards are easily
recognizable.


6. (U) Nairobi has encountered a few instances of
diplomatic note fraud committed by employees of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and other Government of
Kenya (GoK) ministries on behalf of applicants posing as
government officials. Most of these cases of fraud have
been detected by Post's shrewd FSN NIV Supervisor based on
inconsistencies in the application and not in the
diplomatic notes. In most cases these genuine notes are
produced on official paper with legitimate signatures and
format, and it is only the lack of bona fides of applicants
that stand out. We have raised our concerns regarding
these cases with various offices in the GoK.


7. (U) Post recently interviewed an applicant claiming to
be a Catholic nun who was particularly gifted at producing
an alternate identity. The applicant came as a referral
from the Vice President's office with genuine supporting
documentation from the leadership of the Catholic Church in
Kenya. Due to lingering post-interview concerns and the
quick action of the FSN NIV Supervisor, post re-interviewed
the applicant at which point her claim that she was a
longtime Catholic nun recently living in Rome began to
deteriorate. Follow-up calls to the Vice President's
office and representatives of the Catholic Church helped us
realize that these offices had also been duped. A January
7, 2006 article in local newspaper the Nation revealed that
the applicant was arrested for attempting to defraud the
wife of the GoK National Security Minister by spinning a
similar story, only this time stating that she was a
Catholic nun from the United States.

--------------
IV FRAUD
--------------


8. (U) Nairobi's IV fraud is wholly relationship-based.
Post has recently encountered a fraud ring among Eritrean
applicants attempting to qualify for K1 visas. An astute
IV FSN recognized similarities among Eritrean applicants'
submissions, including copious pictures of petitioners and
applicants in similar poses taken in similar locations
across Nairobi. On further inspection, post determined
that petitioners and beneficiaries shared unusually similar
names across cases. It appears that the fraud ring
involved in these applications assisted U.S. based-
petitioners in fraudulently petitioning for their siblings
as follows: Siblings from family A and family B contact the
fraud ring. The ring then sets-up a fraudulent fianc
relationship between Petitioner A and Sibling B and
Petitioner B and Sibling A. Post recently returned at
least 7 of these cases to DHS for revocation. Overall,
Post has seen a marked decline in Eritrean and Ethiopian
applications for immigrant and diversity visas as reported
in Ref D.


9. (U) Nairobi continues to note marriage fraud perpetuated
by sibling petitioners in the U.S. on behalf of Somali
applicants filing for K1 visas. Generally, Somali cases
are characterized by a lack of proof of relationship
between applicants and petitioners. Often, the petitioner
will have immigrated to the U.S. years before and returned
once for a marriage which went wholly undocumented other
than a marriage certificate usually issued from Kenya.
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. The situation becomes more
complicated by the current environment, which prohibits in-
country consular investigations. For most Somali
applicants their true identity remains unknown throughout
the immigration process. Finally, Somalis tend to present
a greater number of fraudulent Kenyan documents, such as
police certificates. Post believes this is because many
Somalis are in Kenya illegally and are concerned about
risking deportation by declaring themselves to Kenyan
officials. In some cases, Kenyan officials take advantage
of Somali applicants and provide them with fraudulent
documents.


10. (U) Post recently encountered a fingerprint hit for a
Somali IR2 applicant, which revealed that she had applied
separately under a different name and date of birth for
refugee status, underlying the fraudulent and unverifiable
nature of Somali identity documents. For cases in which
Post suspects a sibling relationship may exist between the
applicant and the petitioner, we request DNA testing after
exhausting other means of verification. In a number of
cases involving Somali applicants, post has been notified
some weeks after our DNA request that seemingly healthy
applicants have met unexplainable and untimely deaths.
When post requests death certificates for the applicant,
the petitioner either rarely follows-through, or provides
unverifiable Somali death certificates.

--------------
DV FRAUD
--------------


11. (SBU) Nairobi has identified and is currently
investigating a large fraud ring or several fraud rings
involved in the Diversity Visa process. These rings have
found a way to identify single Diversity Visa winners from
a certain region in Kenya. The modus operandi is to then
set-up these principal applicants in sham marriages in an
attempt to traffic their clients as dependent spouses.
These relationships are difficult to detect since the rings
procure legitimate marriage certificates for the
applicants. Confidential informants have suggested that
the ring or rings have representatives in Kenya and in the
U.S. Post has encountered at least 20 such cases with
telltale fraud indicators for the 2006 Diversity Visa
season. An article in the February 6, 2006 edition of The
Standard, a well-regarded Kenyan newspaper, noted that
applicants pay exorbitant fees for Diversity Visa-related
"services" provided by these rings.

--------------
ACS and PASSPORT FRAUD
--------------


12. (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. This is
because Amcit children are traditionally brought to Somalia
by their parents at a young age and raised by relatives in
Somalia. These same children return to the Embassy when
they are teenagers or older requesting passport renewals.
Their situations are particularly difficult as they lend
themselves to imposter substitution, and even verification
of the applicant's status as an Amcit is difficult due to a
lack of any cultural context or photographic evidence of
the child's growth over time.


13. (U) Temporary detention of Somali-Americans occurs with
some frequency at the airport as Kenyan Immigration
officials often carefully scrutinize these Amcits' travel
documents due to a prevalence of fraud among travelers of
Somali-descent. The well-trained airline officials and
Kenyan Immigration officers at the airport regularly
intercept Somali individuals carrying photo-subbed U.S.
passports. Post recently encountered a Somali-American who
came to the Embassy requesting certificates of birth abroad
for his children. He presented a damaged 2004-issued U.S.
passport in support of his request. Inspection of the
passport revealed that the passport's laminate had been
removed and a failed attempt had been made to photo-
substitute the passport.

--------------
ADOPTION FRAUD
--------------


14. (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. Nairobi has recently encountered one case in
which a Kenyan orphanage appears to have been complicit in
securing a student visa for one of their orphans for whom
adoption proceedings were begun immediately after reaching
the applicant's "host family" in the U.S, circumventing the
legal adoption process. The fraud in this case was that
the owner of the orphanage fraudulently obtained a birth
certificate for the child with the orphanage owner listed
as the mother. Post also received significant pressure
from a member of Congress to reverse two earlier refusals
and issue the case. Nairobi also processes adoptions from
Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda. While fraud is minimal, post
believes cases from Uganda may be more subject to fraud
because the legal process for adoptions is less stringent
than in Kenya.

--------------
ASYLUM AND OTHER DHS BENEFITS
--------------


15. (U) The consular section does not conduct asylum and
other DHS-related benefit interviews due to a DHS presence
at post.

--------------
COOPERATION WITH HOST GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES
--------------


16. (U) The GoK has exhibited good cooperation. Nairobi's
FPU Investigations Assistant has a strong working
relationship with Immigration and Police officials in the
GoK, providing us with good access to individuals taken
into custody. The GoK has also afforded us reasonable
access to arrested Amcits. Police officers have proven
responsive to our requests to have applicants arrested for
fraud and misrepresentation. Finally, a Kenyan court
recently gave a favorable verdict against a student
applicant who submitted fraudulent financial documents.
The student pled guilty and was sentenced to a fine of
100,000 Kenyan Shillings (about $1,400) or one year in
jail. The court is also in the process of sentencing the
sponsor who provided fraudulent bank statements in support
of an F1 visa application.

--------------
AREAS OF PARTICULAR CONCERN
--------------


17. (SBU) Post receives a significant volume of applicants
who are third-country nationals living outside of Kenya or
living in Kenya either as refuges or illegally. Given the
general availability of fraudulent documents in Kenya, and
significant external regional pressures including
unemployment, poverty, famine, and conflict; post has
identified particularly high rates of organized fraud among
applicants who depart their home countries and come to
Kenya to process their immigrant visas. Post has noted
particularly high fraud rates among Somali, Ethiopian, and
Eritrean nationals (see Ref A for additional information on
Somali fraud concerns). Ugandan applicants tend to exhibit
lower fraud rates, while Rwandans, Burundians, and
nationals from Seychelles, Mauritius, and Comoros exhibit
the lowest rates of organized fraud.


18. (SBU) Post has encountered a number of Kenyan nationals
who have come forward with badly produced fake Lincoln visa
foils asking whether the visas were legitimate for travel.
One group of fraudsters travels around Nairobi in a car
with fraudulent U.S. diplomatic plates describing
themselves as an American Embassy mobile visa unit. They
produce visas on a color printer for applicants from the
car for a fee of 80,000 Kenyan Shillings or about $1,100.
Others lie in wait for disheartened visa applicants
departing the consular section and approach them with
offers to procure a visa. One disqualified Diversity Visa
applicant was followed and approached in a local bus at
which point she gave her passport, documentation, and $755
to an unknown person promising a visa. Her documents were
recovered through a joint operation between the A/RSO-I and
the Kenyan Police. Still other hopeful Kenyans fall prey
to e-mail scams, which promise U.S. visas for fees and
often include documentation purporting to be from U.S.
Government officials. Despite our ongoing efforts to
inform the Kenyan public that visas are only available from
the Embassy, Kenyan nationals continue to be defrauded in
attempts to gain visas outside of normal channels.


19. (SBU) Nairobi's new A/RSO-I attached to the consular
section has developed a strong relationship with GoK police
and immigration officials. The A/RSO-I has increased
Post's knowledge of human trafficking through Kenya.
Airport authorities have intercepted Chinese, Indian,
Pakistani, and Hong Kong nationals being smuggled through
Nairobi as well as mala fide travelers from African
nations. These imposters are smuggled on a variety of
false travel documents, including U.S. passports. Post
believes that corruption still exists at the airport and
that some airline passengers continue to board planes
having completely circumvented airport security. Of
greater concern, suspect passengers in transit at the
airport continue to walk out of the airport escorted by
corrupt officials after being detained. Other Embassies
have also alerted post of washed U.S. visas, which are
usually used in an attempt to secure visas to EU countries,
Mexico, and Canada. Post's DHS representatives and the
A/RSO-I have developed a good working relationship with
consular officers from other embassies through frequent
meetings of an anti-fraud working group. Most recently the
A/RSO-I and DHS have worked extensively with the Mexican
Embassy to thwart a Tanzanian trafficking ring attempting
to secure visas from the Mexican Embassy for illegal
Chinese aliens destined for the U.S.

--------------
STAFFING AND TRAINING
--------------


20. (U) The FPU unit includes one full-time FSN, Francis
Marawoshe, and three back-up FSNs with collateral duties.
The back-ups include Belinda Adika, the FSN NIV Supervisor,
NIV Clerk Alice Kimuhu, and NIV Clerk Mercy Duo, and NIV
Clerk Sophie Welime (all of which have collateral duties).
Francis Marawoshe, Belinda Adika, and Mercy Duo have
received fraud prevention training in Washington; however,
Alice Kimuhu has not attended fraud-specific training in
Washington. 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 who
has recently returned from fraud training at FSI.

BELLAMY