SEMI-ANNUAL FRAUD SUMMARY (MARCH 2009 - AUGUST 2009)-

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 YEREVAN 000834

DEPT FOR CA/FPP - (RSBILLINGS) AND CA/VO/KCC
DEPT PASS TO KCC WILLIAMSBURG FOR FPM (JSCHOOLS)
NVC FOR FPM (BAUSTIN)
FRANKFURT FOR RCO (KBROUGHAM)
POSTS FOR CONS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KFRD CVIS CPAS CMGT ASEC AM
SUBJECT: SEMI-ANNUAL FRAUD SUMMARY (MARCH 2009 - AUGUST 2009)-
YEREVAN

REF: (A) 2008 YEREVAN 775 (B) 07 SECSTATE 171211


1. (SBU) Armenia remains a high-fraud post. While consular staff
members periodically uncover fraud rings and other organized plots,
post's interviewing officers deal with small-scale fraud every day.
Due to widespread document fraud, including birth and marriage
certificates as well as passports and work documents, consular
officers at post cannot rely on documentation during visa
interviews. The Sixth Department of the National Police, which
combats organized crime, cooperates actively with Post in cases of
document fraud.

COUNTRY CONDITIONS
--------------


2. (U) The international financial crisis has affected Armenia.
Armenia's official unemployment rate for 2008 was 6.3 percent, and
from January-August 2009 it rose to 6.8 percent. However, according
to household surveys conducted in line with International Labor
Organization methodology, actual unemployment for 2008 was estimated
to be around 28 percent, and much higher in the provinces and among
women. The strong GDP growth of recent years, driven primarily by
construction in Yerevan, has evaporated and Armenia's GDP is
projected to decline by about 15 percent in 2009, with zero growth
expected in 2010. As a consequence, the percentage of people living
in poverty is quite high. Many Armenians depend on remittances from
family members abroad, particularly in Russia followed by the United
States. The global economic crisis, however, has significantly
reduced remittances and workers who used to make the annual trip to
Russia to work in construction (legally or illegally) for 6-8 months
per year did not return there in 2009. Consequently, foreign
remittances are down some 30%, according to the International
Monetary Fund. An estimated 1.5 million Armenians have left the
country since 1990. About one-third of Armenians live in rural
areas, many of them as subsistence farmers. The average salary in
Yerevan amounted to USD 318 per month in July 2009. The average
salary in Armenia in July 2009 was USD 293 and the estimate for
August is USD 267.

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


3. (U) Much of the document fraud seen in NIV interviews is
unsophisticated and easy to detect. Occasionally, we find more
serious cases where applicants obtain legitimately issued second
passports, sometimes with different names or dates of birth, an
alternate spelling of the last name, or a new name altogether to
support a mala fide persona. Applicants also can acquire either
genuine but fraudulently obtained or high-quality counterfeit
documents such as birth, marriage and divorce certificates. Post has
had success in referring such cases to the Sixth Department of the
National Police for prosecution. Genuine but fraudulently obtained
diplomas and other education documents are easily available for
those who need to prove credentials (e.g. for DV applicants).
Back-dated reentry stamps are easy to purchase from border guards.
With access to ADIS, post continues to detect ever more instances of
applicants hiding overstays through purchase of back-dated reentry
stamps. To date we have seen a decline in these cases to only four
in the reporting period. Most primary and supporting documentation
is suspect, and officers cannot rely on them in making visa
decisions.


4. (SBU) Individuals providing visa advice and services that fill
out forms for applicants continue to be a source of fraud and
disinformation. One applicant, after finally admitting that she had
overstayed, related that one notorious consultant had told her that
she should hide this ineligibility if she wanted to receive a visa.
In immigrant visa cases, virtually all cases of contrived contacts
are the work of one visa form filler-slash-translator who fills out
the DS-230 immigrant visa application forms.


5. (SBU) Post uses its Accurint account several times a week and has
found it very helpful in vetting NIV petition visas, IV cases, and
sometimes ACS cases. Officers and the fraud investigator can follow
up on leads generated by the Lexis-Nexis reports and thus better
judge the accuracy of information submitted by petitioners and
applicants. This allows interviewing officers to render decisions
more quickly and confidently and to better support recommendations
for petition revocation.


6. (SBU) Post daily confirms NIV applicants' actual exit from the
U.S. using our ADIS account provided by CA/FPP. ADIS has become a
powerful tool for discovering fraud, albeit the records only appear
to be accurate as of 2003.

YEREVAN 00000834 002 OF 005



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


7. (SBU) Yerevan has been processing immigrant visas since 2006 and
fraud is a part of a significant percentage of family-based
immigrant visa applications, especially in K-1 fiancee visa cases.
Most fraudulent cases involve applicants with relatives in the
United States who themselves either overstayed B1B2 visas or lodged
questionable asylum cases in the U.S. These relatives have arranged
sham marriages for IV beneficiaries in an attempt to reunify their
family. In the reporting period, post returned for possible
revocation approximately eight percent of our almost 1,000 IV
(excluding DV) visas issued.


8. (SBU) Lexis-Nexis has been very helpful in providing leads for
investigation of fraud in instances of sham spouses, or their
follow-on step-children. We frequently find American citizen
petitioners continuing to live with their "ex"-spouses, or not
cohabitating with their new spouse.

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


9. (SBU) We occasionally discover fraudulent documents in DV
applications, usually intended to support the addition of
derivatives (birth or marriage documents),or - to a much lesser
degree - demonstrate adequate labor qualifications, i.e. vocational
school diplomas for those who didn't finish high school. Overall
fraud in our DV workload appears to be much less of a problem than
in CR1 and K-1 IV categories. In the reporting period, only a
couple DV cases were refused for failure to qualify for the DV
lottery due to fraudulent documents.


10. (SBU) Post continues to notice a significant number of
inexplicable data entry mistakes for biographic information in DV
winners' registration for the DV lottery. This is not just in cases
where a third party in the U.S., who doesn't really know the
beneficiaries, has registered their entry. Post suspects, but has
no proof, that these cases might represent instances where
beneficiaries deliberately register multiple times for the DV
lottery using slight derivations of their date of birth. These
cases may have somehow managed to bypass Facial Recognition checks.
In general, Armenians rely to an extraordinary degree on relatives
in the U.S. or third parties, usually unscrupulous form fillers
known to provide false or misleading advice, to register for the DV
lottery. This continues to be the case even though the DV
instructions are posted in Armenian on post's website and post's
annual outreach on DV issues focuses on the importance of proper
data entry.

ACS AND U.S. PASSPORT FRAUD
--------------


11. (U) There appears to be much less fraud in our ACS workload
compared to our IV and NIV workload. In the past, we have
occasionally had questionable CRBA applications centering on the
U.S. citizen's actual paternity, resp. ability to transmit
citizenship. To date, most such dodgy CRBA cases have been resolved
with DNA testing. During this reporting period, no cases of ACS
fraud were recorded.

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


12. (U) To be eligible for adoption in Armenia, a child must be
legally abandoned by all living parents through a renunciation of
parental rights, or found to be an orphan by the state. Death
certificates of both parents, court decisions or police statements
(in cases of a foundling child) also may serve as evidence of a
child's orphaned status. Orphaned children become the custody of
orphanages and the Ministry of Labor and Social Issues maintains the
centralized registration and has the list of children available for
adoption. For the first three months on this list, a child may be
adopted only by Armenians; after three months have elapsed, a child
may be adopted by Armenians or foreigners.


13. (SBU) Corruption on the part of Armenian government officials,
adoption agencies and orphanages is a concern, and due to pervasive
document fraud, local birth and identity documents are often not
reliable. However, during this reporting period, none of the cases
we have seen have included fraudulent documents. In addition to
field investigations, post combats adoption fraud by running
background checks on all local adoption facilitators, whom post

YEREVAN 00000834 003 OF 005


still works with on legacy I-601 adoption cases.


14. (SBU) Armenia is officially a signatory to the Hague Convention
on Inter-Country Adoptions, and all adoption cases begun after April
2008 are processed in accordance with the Hague. The Ministry of
Justice has been designated at the Central Authority under the Hague
Convention for Adoptions and Child Abductions and its Department of
Civil Acts Registration is responsible for carrying out day-to-day
operations. A new regulation on adoptions has been cleared with all
governmental agencies involved in the adoption process (the Ministry
of Labor and Social Issues, the Ministry of Health, the MFA, Police,
etc.) and is due to be enacted. The new regulation will reportedly
bring Armenia into compliance with Hague Convention requirements,
and include the implementing regulations for the execution of the
Hague Convention's Article 16 and 23 letters. It will replace
regulations which currently govern the adoption process in Armenia
and will include clear guidance on the operational steps and
implementation deadlines for each Armenian Government agency.

USE OF DNA TESTING
--------------


15. (U) Until September 2009, when the Department released new
worldwide guidance on DNA testing, DNA testing in Yerevan was done
remotely with Embassy panel physicians drawing samples at their
office and then sending the samples to accredited labs in the U.S.
for analysis. A Consular Officer would witness the sampling,
maintain chain of custody, and forward it to the U.S. lab. Results
were sent directly to the Embassy via DHL, generally within three to
four weeks. In the reporting period, post conducted one DNA test in
accordance with the former procedure. Since September 2009, post
has briefed its panel physicians on the new process for DNA testing,
to be done at the Consular Section, and is ready to implement the
new procedures.


16. (U) Post also encounters suspected relationship fraud in
Diversity Visa and family-based Immigrant Visa cases, usually in
marriage or fiance visa cases. To date, DNA testing has not been
used in such cases. In one typical case, the petitioner and
beneficiary volunteered to submit to DNA testing of their supposed
child in common to bolster their claims of being a bona fide couple.
Where DNA testing has been employed, post is generally satisfied
with its current operational procedures.

ASYLUM AND OTHER DHS BENEFIT FRAUD
--------------


17. (SBU) Post is exposed to asylum fraud in two ways. One way is
through anecdotal evidence supplied by NIV applicants whose
relatives went to the United States on non-immigrant visas and
claimed asylum. When applicants volunteer information during visa
interviews on their family member's status in the U.S. as an asylee
or refugee, they have offered all kinds of reasons to justify their
relatives' applications for asylum, including, "She couldn't find a
job here" and the ever-popular, "He got sick."


18. (SBU) The second way in which post encounters asylum fraud is
through the processing of Visas 92/93 following-to-join cases. Post
assumed a large backlog of V92 cases from Moscow in late 2007. In
early FY2009, Post experienced a spike in V92 issuances after
Armenia removed its onerous and time-consuming de-registration
requirement in November 2008. Our V92 volume swelled at the
beginning of FY2009 and has now become a trickle. While the IV
Unit's role in these cases is to verify the relationship of the
following-to-join asylee only, due to the prevalence of fraudulent
documents and fraudulently-obtained authentic documents in Armenia,
consular officers often must review the petitioner's I-589
application for asylum statement and verify the relationship not
only on the basis of civil documents, but based on shared
experiences between petitioner and beneficiaries. Often the
beneficiary is unable to corroborate their relationship to the
beneficiary through shared experiences. In these cases, the
beneficiary may tell completely contradictory information regarding
major life events such as travel abroad, work history,
hospitalizations or arrests. As a result, the consular officer must
assume that either the beneficiary is not related to the petitioner
as stated on their application or (more likely) that the underlying
grounds for asylum are specious. In cases where the consular officer
suspects asylum fraud, the officer drafts a cable reporting these
suspicions to USCIS/ICE for further investigation.


19. (SBU) In the past, Post has seen DHS travel documents (re-entry
permits) that appear to have been issued to aliens when they were
not in the United States, usually persons who received asylum or

YEREVAN 00000834 004 OF 005


refugee status including their derivative family members. The
applications for these documents usually have been filed by
relatives and initially sent to the relatives' addresses in the
U.S., from whence they are forwarded to the alien in Armenia. Often
these cases involve questions by travel document holders on how to
extend reentry permits or applications for U.S. passports for
children born to Armenian asylees/refugees in the U.S., who have
spent considerable amounts of time in Armenia since receiving such
status. We refer all such cases to the DHS/USCIS office at Embassy
Moscow.


ALIEN SMUGGLING, TRAFFICKING, ORGANIZED CRIME,
TERRORIST TRAVEL
-------------- -


20. (SBU) Due to its high unemployment and significant poverty,
Armenia is a source for illegal travel. In recent years, Yerevan's
fraud unit has uncovered two large alien smuggling efforts using
approved P-3 petitions. The fraud unit's investigations resulted in
permanent Class I ineligibilities entered against each group's local
organizer. At post, any group petition is suspected of having one
or two "ringers" and consular officers must vigilantly check the
qualifications of all group applicants. Organized crime is present
in Armenia and particularly active in monopoly sectors such as fuel
and energy.

DS CRIMINAL FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS
--------------


21. (U) The Consular Section maintains good working relations with
the Embassy RSO, and the ARSO/I position Post requested has been
approved by DS and CA and is awaiting funding. The addition of this
position will strengthen and expand post's anti-fraud program. The
Consular Section regularly informs the RSO of cases referred to the
Police's 6th Department for Organized Crime Combat for further
investigation and prosecution.

HOST COUNTRY PASSPORT, IDENTITY DOCUMENTS,
CIVIL REGISTRY
--------------


22. (SBU) Post frequently encounters fraudulent or illegally
obtained original documents, ranging from municipally-issued civil
documents to passports. Yerevan's anti-fraud unit has identified
fraudulent documents manufactured in Armenia, Russia and the United
States according to applicants' own statements. Local forgers are
put in contact with potential clients via word-of-mouth and
"connections" (often in Moscow),while fraudulently obtained
original documents are available for small bribes from local
municipal authorities. Original Armenian passports with altered
information reportedly can be had for several thousand U.S. dollars
at one of Armenia's over 80 passport issuing agencies. Used
passports for photo-substitution reportedly cost a similar amount.
The fact that there is no centralized database which civil
registries can use facilitates document fraud.


23. (SBU) Armenian authorities have issued machine-readable
passports since 1995. In 2000, Armenia began issuing a new machine
readable passport with improved photo security measures. The 1995
passports, which are vulnerable to photo substitutions, remain valid
and with extensions may be in circulation through 2015. Post
learned recently that Armenian authorities hope to issue a tender
for their new ICAO-compliant electronic passport by year's end and
have the first new passports within eight months from the date the
contract is awarded. Post's Export Control and Border Security
Program (INL) also funded purchase of a new passport printer for the
Armenian MFA in the reporting period. Armenian Border Guards use
the Border Management Information System (BMIS) to check passports
of persons entering Armenia. BMIS includes a database of scanned
passports and the Government of Armenia maintains a watch list of
persons of interest.

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


24. (SBU) We normally forward cases involving fraudulent government
documents to the Armenian National Police's 6th Department, the
division tasked with fighting organized crime, and have found them
quite receptive to conducting active investigations. During the
reporting period, Post referred three cases where we suspected that
entry stamps in applicants' passports were genuine, but illicitly
obtained. Our contacts investigated, but were required to pass the
cases to the National Security Service (the former Armenian KGB) as

YEREVAN 00000834 005 OF 005


they have jurisdiction over the border guards. While we have yet to
receive a report on the status of those cases, we heard that several
border guards were fired and the number of genuine, but illicitly
obtained stamps has declined significantly.


25. (SBU) Under Armenian law, forgery is punishable by a fine, one
year's "correctional labor" or up to two years in prison. Using
false documents with the intent to cross a state border is subject
to up to three years in prison. Though we referred several cases of
false documents to the National Security Service (NSS),it appears
that some known forgers and document dealers have protection within
the Armenian government.

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


26. (SBU) Post continues to receive an unusually high number of
requests from ICE attorneys for document verification or
translations of visa applications for persons applying for
immigration benefits in the U.S. This is a labor-intensive task
which occupies a significant part of our fraud investigator's time.
Until recently, document verification requests were usually
channeled through the USCIS Attache's office at Embassy Moscow.
Post now receives the majority of such requests from DRL in the
Department. Requests for visa applications usually come directly
from Assistant Chief Counsels in Los Angeles and usually end up as a
subsequent request for document verification related to an asylum
application. At any one time, post has some 30 pending
investigations with an average of two new investigations requests
and five visa application requests received each week. The majority
of these investigations confirm that the submitted documentation is
fraudulent. Post has developed a Microsoft Access database to track
these cases and, more importantly, quantify the resources spent on
these investigations. We believe this information would be
invaluable to CA/EX to request partial DHS/ICE funding of our FSNI's
position who spends some 40-50% of his time on DHS investigations.

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


27. (U) Embassy Yerevan's FPU consists of Consular Section Chief
Robert Farquhar who serves also as Fraud Prevention Manager (FPM)
and a full-time FSN fraud analyst/investigator (Armen Alaverdian).
The fraud analyst also serves as an interpreter during IV and NIV
interviewing and screens applicants for likely imposters. The fraud
analyst attended FSI's fraud course for FSNs in 2003, the 2006 Fraud
Conference in Istanbul, and completed the online courses PC 544 and
PC 128 as well (as have all consular staff).

YOVANOVITCH