FRAUD SUMMARY - PRAIA

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PRAIA 000178

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR CA/FPP
DHS FOR CIS/FDNS
FRANKFURT FOR RCO RON PACKOWITZ
PLEASE PASS TO KCC WILLIAMSBURG KY

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KFRD CVIS CPAS CMGT ASEC CV
SUBJECT: FRAUD SUMMARY - PRAIA

REF: STATE 057623

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1. (U) Per reftel, the following is Embassy Praia's semi-annual
fraud reporting cable covering March 2009 to August 2009.
Responses are keyed to reftel.


2. (U) A. COUNTRY CONDITIONS: Cape Verde is an archipelago
located 500 kilometers west of Senegal. Cape Verde gained its
independence from Portugal in 1975, but the Cape Verdean
political and legal systems continue to have many similarities
to its former colonial ruler. It is a politically stable
country that has held multiparty elections every five years
since the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde
(PAICV) relinquished its one party rule in 1991. Official
corruption remains quite low in Cape Verde but is anecdotally on
the rise.

In comparison to its West African neighbors, Cape Verde is
relatively wealthy with an estimated per capita annual income in
2008 of $3,800 USD. In 2008, Cape Verde graduated from being a
low-income development country to a middle-income development
country. Due to its extremely arid climate, less than 10% of
the land is arable. As a result, Cape Verde imports most food
and other products. Cape Verde is not economically
self-sufficient and is heavily reliant on foreign aid and
remittances sent from its diaspora in the U.S. and Europe.

Cape Verde has a long history of immigration to the U.S. which
continues today. The Cape Verdean community in the U.S. is
estimated to be between 350,000 and 500,000 with the
overwhelming majority in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The
Cape Verdean population in the U.S. rivals or exceeds the total
number of Cape Verdeans in the archipelago. There are many
Americans permanently residing in Cape Verde, estimates range
from 2000 to 4000. In the summer months, there may be more than
10,000 Cape Verdean-Americans in country. Nearly all American
citizens in Cape Verde are dual nationals or have access to dual
nationality. These AmCits are, for the most part, from two
demographic groups: young children and senior citizens.
Moreover, the AmCit children are either (1) children of retired
naturalized AmCit fathers and much younger Cape Verdean mothers
or (2) children born to Cape Verdean mothers while temporarily
in the U.S. on non-immigrant visitor visas and paid for with
public medical assistance. Most of the adult AmCits in Cape
Verde are naturalized Americans who have returned to their home
islands of Fogo or Brava for retirement.


B. NIV FRAUD: Praia is a low fraud post that had a NIV case
load of approximately 3500 NIVs for FY2009. More than 90% of
all NIVs are B1/B2s, and the next largest category, comprising
approximately 3% of the workload, is K fiance visas. In FY2009,
post adjudicated few student visas: 79 F visas and 16 J visas,
and even fewer employment-based visas: 0 H visas, 0 L visas, 1 O
visa (for a local musician to tour with Jimmy Buffett),and 18 P
visas. The workload from March 2009 to August 2009 remained
constant with the same time period last year.

Most NIV fraud in Praia relates to B1/B2 visas and is not
particularly sophisticated. Applicants for student visas do not
commit fraud on a large scale. Some student applicants try to
use student visas as means to "expedite" the immigrant process
for petitions that are not yet current. Other student visa
applicants are simply interested in any means for an extended
stay in the U.S. In these cases, they are applicants who do not
have a relative who is eligible to file an immigrant petition
for them (i.e., aunts, uncles, or cousins) but who are enrolled
in classes and offered room and board, with the applicant
knowing very few details about the school or study program.

With respect to visitor visas, most NIV fraud consists of fake
job letters. These are usually easy to catch because the salary
does not match the job or the applicant's level of education
does not match the job requirements. Post received several
turnaround reports relating to LPRs with criminal convictions
but few, if any, for persons traveling on nonimmigrant visas.
Moreover, conoff personally consulted with DHS/CBP in Boston in
January 2009, and DHS reported that they had few refused
admissions or adverse actions for the TACV flight from Praia to
Boston.

Third country nationals comprised roughly 6 percent of Praia's
NIV cases in FY2009. Of the third country national cases, the
largest percentage of cases were from China followed by the West
African nations of Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria and Senegal. So far,
no fake Chinese documents have been detected. Applicants from
West African countries cases, however, are among our most
suspicious and the most likely to have fraudulent national

PRAIA 00000178 002.2 OF 004


residence cards or other documents.

Between March 2009 and September 2009, post adjudicated 10 visas
for Chinese nationals in contrast to the 33 applicants over the
same period the previous year. Interestingly, in January 2009,
a Chinese visa recipient, who flew on the nonstop TACV flight
from Praia to Boston, was refused admission by DHS and returned
to Cape Verde. Since this incident, post has noticed a sharp
reduction in the number of Chinese who show up for their
appointments to apply for NIVs.


C. IV FRAUD: Over 98 percent of IV cases processed at post are
family-based, and nearly every Cape Verdean has some family
member in the U.S. Post has identified very little fraud in
most family-based IV cases.

The biggest concerns among all visa categories are K-1 fiance
and CR-2 step child visas. Fraud in these cases is difficult to
prove because many times the husband and wife collude to claim a
bona fide relationship. Post suspects a high number of cases
(perhaps 50 percent or more) are marriages of convenience for
immigration purposes. Given the fact that the Cape Verdean
community in the U.S. is very tightly knit, many Cape
Verdean-Americans will enter into marriages to help out a
"friend in need," especially for the sake of the principal
beneficiary's children.

While formal marriage in Cape Verde is uncommon and most Cape
Verdean couples live together for years without ever getting
legally married, it is not unusual to see Cape Verdean-Americans
married several times. After each divorce, the Cape
Verdean-American files another K-1 petition for a new
prospective spouse or a CR-2 petition for their spouse's
children who were left behind in Cape Verde years earlier. It
appears that many Cape Verdean-Americans marry and wait the
necessary period of time for a spouse to obtain residency status
or U.S. citizenship, divorce the petitioning spouse, and file a
petition for a previous lover or parent of their child(ren).

Finally, it is very common to see couples with a significant age
difference of 20 years or more. Usually, it is an older man and
a younger woman, but petitions filed by older women for younger
men are also becoming routine. Many of these relationships are
first seen in connection with CRBA applications and then later
IV petitions, where retired men will develop relationships and
procreate with young women in their early- to mid-twenties.


D. DV FRAUD: DV cases are rare in Cape Verde. In FY2008, post
did not process any DV cases, whereas in FY2009, post received
and issued merely 8 DV applicants from three families.


E. ACS AND U.S. PASSPORT FRAUD: ACS fraud in Praia is
relatively rare. The most suspect cases involve children who
were not registered immediately after birth. However, more and
more, births are registered at or near the time of the child's
birth, but sometimes the birth or paternity of a child was
registered a few months or years after the birth or even mere
days before the IV interview or CRBA application. In almost all
CRBA cases, the biggest issue is the alleged AmCit parent's
inability to document the requisite period of physical presence
prior to the birth of the child.

A birth certificate (available from the Conservatoria dos
Registos) is always required for CRBA and IV applications. This
birth record includes a complete copy of all the significant
events in a person's life from birth to marriage to death. The
registry book indicates when a child was registered, the date
s/he was registered, and the civil status of the child's
parents. Most Embassy LE staff personally know Conservatoria
officials who issue vital record documents, so the information
can be verified quickly. Cape Verde is also in the process of
computerizing these records, and most birth, marriage, and death
records are now electronic.

Cape Verdeans are astutely aware of U.S. citizenship law and
often take advantage of "tourist" visits to have their children
in the U.S at the U.S. taxpayer's expense. The children are
issued U.S. passports when they are days or weeks old. Five
years later when the parents apply for the child's second
passport, it is nearly impossible to match the five-year old
child with the original passport photo. Using age progression
photos and the original passport application in PIERS to verify
the parent's signature coupled with questioning of the child,
one can often feel relatively certain that the child in the new
passport application is the same as the original passport.
However, unscrupulous adults and a well-coached child could

PRAIA 00000178 003.2 OF 004


potentially fool an officer.


F. ADOPTION FRAUD: Adoption cases in Cape Verde are rare but
have not appeared to be fraudulent.


G. USE OF DNA TESTING: Generally, if a birth or marriage
document is suspected to be fraudulent, post verifies its
authenticity with local officials. Occasionally, DNA is
suggested when the bona fides of a blood relationship cannot
otherwise be confirmed. To date, very few applicants have opted
against DNA testing, and DNA test results have almost always
confirmed the claimed relationship.


H. ASYLUM AND OTHER DHS BENEFIT FRAUD: Post has not processed
any asylum (Visas 92/93) cases in the past three years. Praia
is not aware of any DHS benefits fraud cases.


I. ALIEN SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING, ORGANIZED CRIME, TERRORIST
TRAVEL: Narcotics trafficking and alien smuggling are on the
rise in Cape Verde, and given the geographical location of Cape
Verde in relation to Africa, Europe, North and South America, it
is likely to increase. In fact, Cape Verde's Minister of Defense
estimated that one-fifth of the world's cocaine supply transits
through West Africa. Criminal groups involved in these
activities typically are well-funded. It is reasonable to
believe that these organizations will use fraudulent documents
in support of their criminal activities.

In July 2008, the Cape Verdean Coast Guard intercepted a boat
with 138 illegal immigrants, including children, who were on
their way to Europe via the Canary Islands. In September 2008,
the Cape Verdean maritime authorities investigated an empty
dugout on the island of Santo Antao. The dugout contained an
empty engine that was missing its propeller and which was
suspected of being used to transport more illegal immigrants to
the Canary Islands for entry into Europe. All suspected illegal
immigrants in both cases were sent back to their countries of
origin (Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and Cameroon). In October 2008,
the Judiciary Police found 172 kilograms of cocaine in the
engine of an old car at the Port of Praia. Five suspects were
arrested, one of whom died while in custody (presumed suicide)
and another of whom was killed by unknown assailant (but was
allegedly killed pursuant to an order by the one who was
believed to have committed suicide). All cases remain ongoing.


J. DS CRIMINAL FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS: Post does not have a
resident RSO or RSO/I and does not have any ongoing local DS
criminal fraud investigations.


K. HOST COUNTRY PASSPORT, IDENTITY DOCUMENTS, AND CIVIL
REGISTRY: Most Cape Verdean documents are relatively simple with
little or no fraud prevention features. The two exceptions are:
(1) national identification cards and (2) passports.

NATIONAL ID CARD: Cape Verde has a national ID card essentially
identical to that of Portugal. The front of the national ID
card has a picture of the person, the person's fingerprint
(right-index finger),and the person's signature. The back of
the national ID contains the person's biographic data including
his/her father's and mother's names, place of birth, date of
birth, and current residence. The ID is laminated to protect it
from damage and presumably to avoid photo substitution.
National ID fraud appears to be relatively low. However, typos
and other errors are more likely to be seen, and applicants are
required to amend requisite documents prior to receiving their
requested benefit.

PASSPORTS: Cape Verdean passport books have a number of fraud
prevention features. In the past, passports suffered from poor
quality control and lack of standardization. Until recently,
each municipality had the authority to issue passports. Each
place used its own typewriter to fill in a person's biographic
page or hand wrote it, and there was no visible standard
passport photo size. Quality control on the placement and
adhesion of passport photos was often quite poor. The result
was that photos often shifted locations after the laminate was
applied to the photo. All of these factors made it next to
impossible to detect passport fraud or photo substitution.

Beginning in January 2006, the Cape Verdean authorities
centralized passport issuance to four locations: Praia on the
island of Santiago, Sao Felipe on the island of Fogo, Espargos
on the island of Sal, and Mindelo on the island of Sao Vicente.
For the last several years, the passport authority in Praia has
issued machine-readable passports that now contain digitized
photos. This centralization of passport issuance services and

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the standardization of the biographic data page is a big step
forward. Unfortunately, to date, the quality of the digitized
photos has been poor but is improving.

With respect to how Cape Verdean citizens' names are listed in
their passports, generally, domestically-issued passports
include only a single final surname on the surname blank, and
the given names and any other matronymics or patronymics are on
the given name blank. Overseas posts do not generally respect
this naming practice, and often list all surnames, matronymics,
and patronymics in the surname blank.

One other factor that has hindered fraud detection is the length
of the validity period of Cape Verdean passports. Although
their initial validity is for five years, they may be extended
by stamping the inside page with an extended validity date.
This may be done up to two times, for five years each, which
means that a Cape Verdean citizen may have the same passport
photo in his/her passport for up to fifteen years.

RESIDENCE DOCUMENTS: Cape Verdean residence documents issued to
third country nationals living in Cape Verde are extremely easy
to fabricate. A Cape Verdean residence document is a tri-fold
piece of green cardstock paper. There is a picture of the
individual glued on one page and typewritten text on the rest of
the pages. There is no laminate to protect the photo or to
prevent photo substitution. In the past, residency cards had to
be renewed annually, but a new rule adopted in 2008 allows for
the residency cards to be valid for three to five years
depending on the length of residence in Cape Verde.


L. COOPERATION WITH HOST GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES: Local
authorities are generally very cooperative with Embassy requests
for information, and they do not view fraud as a victimless
crime. However, Cape Verdean immigration police are
under-funded, under-trained, and under-equipped. Local
authorities would welcome assistance, both training as well as
equipment, to assist in fraud detection and prevention.


M. AREAS OF PARTICULAR CONCERN: See paragraph I relating to
alien smuggling and trafficking.


N. STAFFING AND TRAINING: The Consular Section in Praia
consists of one full-time consular officer (soon to be adding a
second full-time consular officer),one part-time consular
officer (with additional POL and PD responsibilities) and four
LE Staff, one of whom is designated to assist with fraud
prevention. Praia does not have a resident RSO, but has a
locally employed FSN Investigator (FSN/I) who assists with fraud
investigations. The LE staff member who works on fraud
prevention attended PC542 FSN Fraud Prevention Workshop in
September/October 2001. Post will request that she attend a
future training workshop to update her fraud prevention skills.

Cases that have criminal elements or who are suspected of fraud
are referred immediately to the FSN/I for investigation. After
each investigation, the fraud prevention LE Staff and/or FSN/I
meets with the full-time consular officer to report on the
result of the investigation.
STEWART