Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Visa Fraud - in outsourcing and offshoring we trust

Is this the worst harvesting syndicate in Australia ... (Due to space issues, Pepo and MD will look after the red Ferari ...)


“To my knowledge there are no identity documents in India that are not altered or counterfeited frequently. Even when we send them for verification we cannot be sure that the "verifier" has not been paid to tell us the document is genuine. “

-Canadian High Commissioner, New Delhi in April 2007
 
Availability and prevalence of fraudulent identity documents, including membership cards of political parties ...

The Ferrari-driving contractor, Baljit "Bobby" Singh, and two of his business associates ... Rakesh Kumar, 37, and Mukesh Sharma, 42 ... 
Exclusive - Visa crime racket

Australia Post has sacked a millionaire labour hire contract 
or who is at the centre of a major federal police fraud probe and who has been accused of exploiting overseas workers. Australia Post link to visa crime racket

"We reported him to Australia Post in 2012 for underpaying his workers but nothing happened. In fact, what seems to happen was he was being preferenced above other contractors." 
Contractors raided in Australia post investigation

Hardly any week goes by without the appearance of an article on corruption in higher education. The stories cover not only individual students or faculty but also whole institutions and even countries. And corruption in higher education has even crossed borders and become global. One cannot help asking whether higher education has become the hotbed of corruption.
Hotbed corruption

VISAS have been stripped from several hundreds of foreigners after data-matching exposed stories of finding love with Australians as fairytales.
The Human Services and Immigration Departments are using a new hi-tech system to identify those taking welfare payments as singles, despite sponsoring overseas partners.
As the Herald Sun reported recently, nearly 50,000 people — a quarter of last year’s migrant intake — got visas as brides, grooms, fiances, and gay partners

Justin Sidhu, from Edmonton in western Canada, was convicted yesterday after a two-day trial. Sidhu has been found guilty of drug trafficking after he delivered six grams of methamphetamine, a controlled substance believed to be worth about $6,000, to an inmate at a remand centre. 
"He knew about the drugs," she said. "This is not a little lie. I say this was a big lie. You don't say something is privileged if it clearly isn't." Indian origin lawyer guilty of drug trafficking in Canada

Regulatory documents show that in both Britain and Australia, more graduates of Indian medical schools lost their right to practice medicine in the past five years than did doctors from any other foreign country.
Why medical schools are plagued with fraud

Tens of thousands of foreign students have become permanent residents in Australia as a likely result of widespread fraud and corruption within and outside the federal Immigration Department.
Foreign Students 

Transparency International’s 2013 Global Corruption Report: Education


One in every five CVs floating in the Indian IT industry is suspect, industry insiders and hiring experts say. R Nandan, a 33-year-old employee of IBM, was discovered to have used his wife's academic credentials to get his Rs 24-lakh-a-year job, putting the spotlight on rampant resume fraud faced by India's $100-billion information technology services sectortechnology industry sector

Hiral Patel, 32, and Shikha Mohta, 31, employees of SCM Data Inc. and MMC Systems Inc., have been charged with one count of conspiracy to bring in and harbor aliens and to obstruct justice

Have Tata and Infosys  also build their businesses on cheap labour that drives its employees to commit fraud to supplement their income?

Hypocrisy and connections help IT outsourcing firms

Unisys and Infosys will take over IT service delivery to various New South Wales government agencies as the state shifts to an as-a-service IT model. The two companies have signed contracts that will see them provide IT services for clients of ServiceFirst, the shared services provider serving various agencies for the Office of Finance and Services. Unisys and Infosys now in Australia

The Indian IT services giant, Infosys, has reached a record settlement with U.S. authorities in a case involving alleged misuse of temporary visas to undercut competitors, accusations which it has denied.
Infosys denies US visa fraud but pays $34m settlement


Jack Palmer, a former Infosys Ltd employee responsible for starting a U.S. investigation into the company's visa practices has filed another lawsuit demanding damages for alleged wrongful termination.
Infosys, India's second-largest IT services exporter, today revealed it had fired Abraham Mathews, chief financial officer of its BPO unit, for failure to comply with the company's code of conduct.
Infosys BPO chief executive officer Gautam Thakkar resigned on "moral grounds" and will leave the company on November 30, Infosys said. It did not give details about the charges against Mathews.
Infosys execs ousted after apple overbilling scandal

Federal agents raid schools in Los Angeles catering to foreign students

Thousands of foreign students at publicly funded colleges are to lose the right to work in Britain while they study. UK foreign students visa fraud crackdown

A section of international students in Canada have been reportedly denied work permit.
Foreign students distress canada denies work permit over online courses

College entrance exam fraud is widespread as a record number of international students attends American colleges and universities, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday. Chinese heading for Australia

Strike force detectives have charged three men with a total of 165 offences following a lengthy investigation into alleged banking fraud. Strike Force Cottenham is a joint investigation by the State Crime Command’s Fraud & Cybercrime Squad and the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
The strike force was formed in December 2014 to investigate large-scale fraud offences committed against financial institutions involving internet bank accounts.
Following an exhaustive investigation, two men – aged 28 and 29 – were arrested by detectives at Rhodes about 2pm on Tuesday (22 July 2015) and taken to Burwood Police Station.
NSW Police

Visa fraud crackdown

Tucked away in the Reserve Bank's submission to a parliamentary inquiry into housing ownership was a bullish forecast of student visa growth. As Exhibit A shows, foreign student numbers are rising sharply and predicted to regain and surpass the record 2009 level of some 120,000 in two years and then keep going. Foreign students set to power housing

Visa Program For Wealthy Investors Marred By Fraud America’s multibillion-dollar immigrant investor program is overseen by an agency that many say is not equipped to smell out financial fraud How a ponzi scheme hoodwinked immigration authorities

A 24-YEAR-OLD Lithuanian woman has been “engaged” to marry four different Asian men in Ireland in the past nine months, a Sunday Times investigation has found. Three of the men, two from Pakistan and one from India, claim the woman accepted €3,000 from each of them in return for agreeing to enter a sham marriage to regularise their visa status in Ireland. The three men allege the woman took the money but then reneged on the deal Marrying many men

“The global financial crisis, the rapid growth in the value of the Australian dollar, increased competition from established countries and new countries entering the international education market and the perception that Australia is perhaps not as safe and welcoming as previously thought contributed to instability in the sector and strain on Australia's student visa program.  Furthermore, it became apparent that many international students were not coming to Australia with a genuine intention to study and then return home. Policy and legislative settings contributed to a situation where the primary purpose of some students in deciding to study in Australia was to gain permanent residence under the skilled migration program. The availability of this pathway led to a massive increase in the number of international students in the vocational education and training sector in particular. This was not an example of an education sector growing sustainably and with integrity; it was an illustration of unsustainable directions and practices. The rapid acceleration of student visa grants to students with no intention of returning home after studying put a massive strain on the credibility of the international education sector and led to considerable pressure on the department and the integrity of the student visa program and the broader migration program in general…

As recommended by ANAO in recommendation 6, a DIAC-DEEWR strategic student visa policy group has been established as a mechanism to coordinate activity between the two departments regarding international students and international education issues. That concludes the main points I wish to convey in my opening statement and thank you for the opportunity to do so…”

- Mr Kruno, KUKOC First Assistant Secretary, Department of Immigration and Citizenship

JOINT COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT

Auditor-General's reports Nos 16 to 46 (2010-11)

Hansard, 12 OCTOBER 2011 p 1- 2
 
Australia's federal police and corporate regulator have uncovered efforts by a suspected Russian hacker to artificially inflate the share price of several unnamed ASX-listed companies. An investigation into the alleged plot by the AFP and ASIC - dubbed Operation Emerald - centred on an overseas account that traded through Morgan Stanley's Australian operation.
AFP and ASIC uncover alleged-hackers plot to boost stock prices