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RR RUEHBI RUEHCI
DE RUEHKA #0997/01 0581008
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 271008Z FEB 06
FM AMEMBASSY DHAKA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5617
INFO RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI 8898
RUEHCI/AMCONSUL CALCUTTA IN
RUEHCG/AMCONSUL CHENNAI 0842
RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI 0199
RUEHKT/AMEMBASSY KATHMANDU 8389
RUEHLM/AMEMBASSY COLOMBO 7305
RUEHIL/AMEMBASSY ISLAMABAD 0970
RUEHRH/AMEMBASSY RIYADH 0332
RUEHKU/AMEMBASSY KUWAIT 0203
RUEHDO/AMEMBASSY DOHA 0184
RUEHMS/AMEMBASSY MUSCAT 0018
RUEHAD/AMEMBASSY ABU DHABI 0916
RUEHPNH/NVC PORTSMOUTH 2732

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 08 DHAKA 000997 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR CA/FPP 
DEPT PASS TO KCC 
 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: CMGT KFRD ASEC CVIS CPAS BG
SUBJECT: FRAUD SUMMARY - DHAKA 
 
REF:  (A) CHENNAI 173(B) 05 DHAKA 779 
 (C)05 DHAKA 2242(D) 05 STATE 205073 
 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY. Dhaka is a high fraud post with a full-time FPM and 
a busy FPU.  Fraud, especially in IV and DV cases, is a daily 
occurrence for adjudicators, and is most often found in ages of 
children, marital status, and qualification for the DV program. 
Most Bangladeshi documents are unreliable, necessitating frequent 
field investigations.  Bangladeshi officials, at times, issue 
sue 
certificates or other documents containing fraudulent information 
to visa applicants as a favor.  Post continues to expand our 
contacts with local police and immigration services, and our new 
A/RSO-I is making important progress in this area.  END SUMMARY 
 
¶2.  COUNTRY CONDITIONS: Bangladesh is a developing country of 
more than 150 million people living in an area roughly the size 
of Wisconsin.  More than a third of the population lives below 
the poverty line, and the current per capita income is about 
$390.  More than 60% of the population is involved in agriculture 
which accounts for about 25% of GDP. The national growth rate of 
about five percent for the past decade has not been sufficient to 
reduce poverty for the majority of Bangladeshis.  The cost of 
living (rent and food) for the poor and middle class is roughly 
double that of Kolkata in the state of West Bengal in neighboring 
India, and there is general economic insecurity at all levels of 
society.  Infrastructure, especially road infrastructure, is poor 
outside of main cities and towns.  This, combined with terrain 
and climate considerations, makes the conduct of field 
investigations a difficult task. 
 
The vast majority of Bangladeshis are Bengalis though small 
minorities of non-Bengalis, the tribal groups, also live in 
Bangladesh.  90% of the population is Muslim, 7% are Hindu, and 
the remaining 3% are a mix of Christians, Buddhists, and other 
religions.  Although a Muslim country, personal status laws are 
based on ones religion.  However, some civil laws are in 
contradiction to traditional Islamic sharia, which presents some 
interesting challenges in evaluating marriages, divorces, and 
adoptions. 
 
Bangladesh is a multi-party democracy, though the political scene 
is dominated by the two main parties, the Awami League (AL) and 
the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).  A BNP-led coalition of 
three Islamic parties is currently in power, but the country will 
hold elections later this year.  The past several years have been 
turbulent as the opposition and the government have fought tooth- 
and-nail over just about every issue.  The AL-led opposition 
actually walked out of the Parliament more than a year ago and 
opposition lawmakers have only recently returned. The 
confrontational nature of politics between the two major parties 
and an unsettled law-and-order situation leave many Bangladeshis 
uncertain about the long-term prospects for the country. 
Politics are rough-and-tumble, and over the past year, there have 
been several sensational assassinations of Awami League leaders 
and several as yet unsolved grenade attacks on senior AL leaders. 
However, in general, all political parties, even minor ones, are 
relatively free to organize and operate, and the press has a 
great deal of freedom to publish. 
 
Bangladesh has a long history of large-scale labor export, both 
legal and illegal, with millions of men and women working abroad, 
principally in the Persian Gulf (over a million in Saudi Arabia 
alone, according to the Saudi Embassy) and in South/Southeast 
Asia.  The government actively promotes international manpower 
export and has an official government ministry (Ministry of 
Expatriate Welfare) tasked to support the export of labor and the 
remittance of wages.  Remittances are an important element of the 
Bangladeshi economy, and we feel this leads the government to 
look with little enthusiasm on proposals to repair systemic 
weaknesses in the issuance of documents and entry/exit controls. 
We believe that this national interest on working abroad is one 
of the main reasons that we receive little or no cooperation from 
local police on the arrest and prosecution of document vendors 
and forgers. 
 
DHAKA 00000997  002 OF 008 
 
 
 
The government has little effective control over the issuance of 
official documents, such as birth certificates and marriage and 
divorce certificates, making such documents easy targets for 
abuse and fraud.  Regulatory controls over these documents are so 
lax that true counterfeits are rare since it is quite easy to 
obtain a genuinely-issued document containing any information 
desired by the visa applicant.  Except for some birth documents 
issued by the larger city corporations and municipalities, 
official documents are not printed on security paper and do not 
incorporate even the most basic security features.  Controls over 
passport issuances are equally weak, and the government has no 
centralized control over or records of passport issuances.  Post 
has uncounted examples of Bangladeshis obtaining legitimate 
travel documents in fraudulent names or with fraudulent dates of 
birth or listing fraudulent parents.  We also have many cases 
where Bangladeshis have obtained multiple passports in multiple 
identities.  The record currently stands with one enterprising 
chap who is known to have 17 different passports in five 
different identities.  Although Post has been working with the 
Home Ministry on a machine-readable passport (MRP) project, it is 
unclear when the program will actually commence.  Furthermore, 
without great institutional controls over issuances, the 
situation will only come to mirror India, where hi-tech passports 
are easily available in a fraudulent identity. (Ref A) 
 
¶3.  NIV FRAUD:  Although Dhaka is a high-fraud Post, window fraud 
on the NIV line is generally unsophisticated and obvious.  Given 
that most documents are considered unreliable, officers rely more 
on effective lines of questioning during interviews.  Dhaka sees 
the usual array of fake bank and employment letters and 
invitations, but we believe that our effective new officer 
orientation and proactive FPU give the officers the needed tools 
to recognize and deal with such cases.  Our FPU has good 
relations with most major banks and this is invaluable in 
detecting or confirming fraudulent bank documents.  In 2005, we 
encountered only 1 washed NIV, but we are aware of 2 incidents of 
counterfeit NIVs.  We worked closely with our A/RSO-I to open an 
investigation of the counterfeiter, and our A/RSO-I continues to 
work with local police on these cases.  On several instances, the 
NIV unit has reported receiving inquiries from individuals who 
wanted to verify that their visas are genuine.  Suspecting the 
worst, we always tell such callers that they have to bring their 
visas in to the Embassy for us to verify the documents. 
Unsurprisingly, no one has yet appeared to verify their visa. 
 
Though Dhaka is a low-volume H1B and L visa country, most of our 
serious NIV fraud is found in the H1B/H4 category.  We have some 
trouble with H1B renewals for smaller, less well-known companies 
where questions may exist regarding the H1B applicants work 
history or the basic legitimacy of the petitioner.  However, most 
of our fraud occurs in cases of first-time applicants from 
Bangladesh.  We regularly see applicants who present either fake 
ke 
university degrees from Bangladeshi or Indian schools or vastly 
overstated work experience coupled with suspect certificates from 
various IT training institutes.  We also have difficulties with 
H4 applicants.  Since Bangladesh is country with a long tradition 
of settled, i.e. arranged, marriages, it is not uncommon to 
have a wife apply for an H4 who literally met her husband on 
their wedding day.  Then after spending a brief honeymoon with 
him, she waved goodbye as he flew back to the US.  It is 
difficult to differentiate between legitimate settled marriages 
and marriages strictly for immigration purposes.  This problem is 
also common with IV and DV cases and is discussed more fully in 
the IV section. 
 
R1s are also a problematic visa category as every year we see 
many questionable R1 applicants seeking to go to the US to lead 
Ramadan prayers.  Most of these applicants have the most nebulous 
of qualifications and employment histories, and FPU checks most 
ost 
often reveal that their qualifications are, at best, generously 
overstated.  We find in some cases that the real sponsor is often 
a relative who sits on the management committee of the mosque 
offering the invitation. 
 
DHAKA 00000997  003 OF 008 
 
 
 
Finally, Post also sees a number of Bhutanese NIV applicants who 
are trying their luck in Dhaka instead of in New Delhi or 
Kolkata.  It is difficult to identify fraudulent B1/B2 applicants 
because of a lack of knowledge about Bhutan and the lack of a 
common language, so most applicants are merely 214b.  We have 
experienced some problems with fraudulent R1 applications.  For 
example, one group of 10 applied last year under the leadership 
of two monks, one who had led another such group to the US and 
the other with extensive travel in Europe.  The group was 
supposed to teach traditional Buddhist religious dance, song, and 
prayers at a Buddhist center in Maryland.  However, we found that 
two of the religious workers had previously applied in New 
w 
Delhi for B1/B2 visas.  We also found that, when asked to 
demonstrate their prayers and religious songs and dances, half of 
the group were just lip-synching or were too sick to dance. 
Finally, we found that the monk who had traveled to the US had 
forgotten to bring his three traveling companions back to Bhutan 
when he left the US.  As an added note, IDENT hits revealed that 
two of these characters later applied for visas to attend a dairy 
conference in Wisconsin, using different employment histories and 
slightly different DOBs. 
 
¶4.  IV FRAUD:  IV fraud occupies the majority of the FPUs 
effort.  We see all types of fraud in all visa categories.  In 
particular, we see a large amount of age fraud among applicants 
claiming to be less than 21 years of age, marriage fraud, and 
employment visa fraud.  With the relative lack of security of 
most Bangladeshi documents, official or not, it is very easy for 
applicants to obtain fake or fraudulent documents to support 
rt 
their claims.  FPU investigations uncover many instances where 
responsible officials were aware that the documents they were 
issuing contained fraudulent information, but they did it to 
help [the applicants] travel to the US. 
 
We see age fraud both with principal applicants and with 
derivatives, though CSPA has reduced the number of age fraud 
cases that we pursue.  Since birth certificates are generally not 
reliable and most births are late registered a few months before 
a petition is filed, we generally rely on secondary documents, 
such as school certificates, to corroborate the applicants 
claimed date of birth.  FPU investigations uncovered document 
fraud, either in the form of forged certificates or certificates 
with fraudulent information that is not supported by the schools 
records, in more than 80% of cases involving suspected age fraud. 
It is not uncommon to find cases where a school head master 
admits that a certificate was issued as a favor to an applicant, 
nt, 
sometimes with a fake date of birth and other times for 
applicants who never actually studied at the school.  We also use 
a bone-age test (Ref B) as an initial screen for possible age 
fraud, though we apply a generous margin of error.  Using the 
results of the test, we have elicited dozens of confessions from 
applicants and petitioners.  Usually the fraud is only a few 
years, though in extreme cases, we have seen misrepresentations 
of 10 or more years in dates of birth.  However, equally 
important, with a positive result, we have been able to quickly 
return many cases to IV where an officer initially had some doubt 
about a child applicants age.   In all fairness to applicants, 
many people do not really know their dates of birth.  In the 
past, birth registration was never a priority and late 
registrations were the norm rather than the exception.  Only when 
it was necessary, for example at school registration, would a 
date of birth be established, hence the popularity of January 1 
as a DOB in Bangladesh.    The government is taking steps to 
require birth registration within a year of birth, but that is 
very much a work in progress. 
 
In marriage fraud cases, we see fraudulent marriages, cases where 
one spouse did not properly divorce his/her spouse in Bangladesh 
before marrying again (usually found in IR2 step-child case), or 
cases where an applicant hid an existing marriage during an F2A 
or F2B application.  Most cases involve AmCits or LPRs who were 
born in Bangladesh and are seeking a Bangladeshi spouse.  They 
 
DHAKA 00000997  004 OF 008 
 
 
ask their relatives to find a suitable spouse, and once the 
matter is settled, they fly to Bangladesh for a wedding.  As 
previously mentioned with H4 cases, this tradition of settled 
marriages poses difficulties for adjudicators.  Since it is not 
unusual for a spouse, especially a new wife, to know almost 
nothing about their partner, we rely heavily on secondary 
evidence to establish the bona fides of the marriage.  Marriages 
in Bangladesh are major social events, often times with several 
sub-events and attended by many guests, sometimes several 
hundred.  In case of legitimate marriages, there will usually be 
a bonanza of secondary evidence, such as photos, videos, 
invitations, cards, etc., to back up the marriage.  In most of 
our cases with fraud, the lack of secondary evidence was one of 
the initial red flags.  We are also seeing a rise in the number 
of cases of marriages where a US spouse, usually a man, met the 
Bangladeshi spouse, usually a woman, through the Internet, though 
the total number of these cases remains low. 
 
We encounter both counterfeit and fraudulent marriage documents 
and insufficient marriage documents, most often in the form of 
Marriage Affidavits, which are not sufficient, in any case, to 
serve as legal proof of marriage, except for Hindus and 
Buddhists.  In some cases, applicants present completely 
counterfeit marriage documents, but at times, as with education 
n 
documents, we find cases where a marriage registrar issues a 
fraudulent marriage certificate as a favor to the applicant. 
These cases are generally identifiable as suspect because they 
usually lack any secondary evidence.  While it is rare to find a 
case where an FPU document check uncovers a fake marriage 
document but the case presents strong secondary evidence, it is 
not uncommon for FPU neighborhood and documents checks to come 
back as genuine in cases without strong secondary evidence.  We 
also routinely see cases involving counterfeit, fraudulent or 
insufficient divorce documents.  As with marriage documents, some 
involve true counterfeits, but some involve fraudulent documents 
given as a favor to the applicant.  We also see cases where a 
claim of divorce is based on an affidavit of divorce without a 
corresponding official divorce certificate from a court or an 
office authorized to register divorces.  A bare divorce affidavit 
is not sufficient in Bangladesh for any type of divorce, and the 
presence of a bare affidavit is a key fraud indicator.  We have a 
nearly 100% fraud rate in cases of divorce affidavits, most often 
in cases of IR2 step-children. 
 
Historically, most of our E3 cases have been fraudulent, 
especially for Indian specialty cooks.  Over the past several 
years, there have been several well-publicized cases of 
immigration lawyers who confessed to large-scale abuse of such 
visas on behalf of their clients, including many Bangladeshis. 
Although the overall number of E3 principals applying for visas 
is very low, most E3 cases are referred to the FPU for 
investigation.  We also process a large number of follow-to-join 
cases for E3 derivatives.  In these cases, we focus primarily on 
age fraud concerns, though with the generous relief offered by 
CSPA, most applicants will qualify as children. 
 
Post receives a number of requests each year from DHS 
adjudicators in the various service centers or in CIS offices for 
document verification, generally for marriage and divorce 
documents and work certificates.  In 2005, we completed 17 
investigations for DHS, and in 12 cases, we determined that the 
applicant had submitted fake documents.  Half of the bad cases 
were marriage or divorce document checks, and the other half were 
work certificates. 
 
¶5.  DV FRAUD:  Bangladeshis are enthusiastic participants in the 
DV program.  For the past five years, Bangladeshis have submitted 
more entries than anyone else, and Bangladesh perennially ranks 
in the top 5 for DV winners.  Unfortunately, Bangladeshis are 
equally enthusiastic about DV fraud, and our DV unit faces a 
daily barrage of fake or altered school documents, fraudulent 
work letters, and suspect marriages.  DV brokers and visa fixers 
are a part of the landscape in Bangladesh (Ref C), and our A/RSO- 
I continues to work with local police on several ongoing DV fraud 
ring investigations. 
 
DHAKA 00000997  005 OF 008 
 
 
 
Occupational qualification fraud is the easiet to detect and 
defeat.  Using the O-Net standards, adjudicators ask detailed 
d 
questions about the applicants usual work and can usually 
quickly identify those who qualify from those who are inflating 
their qualifications.  Relatively few cases are referred for 
document verification, but in more than 70% of these marginal 
cases, an investigation revealed that the applicants either 
overstated their qualifications or submitted fraudulent work 
letters. 
 
Counterfeit and/or altered school certificates are also 
commonplace.  Post has extensive exemplar files of genuine and 
fake Secondary School Certificates (SSC) and Higher Secondary 
Certificates (HSC) from all the regional Boards of Education. 
These are available in both hard copy and electronic soft copy, 
available to consular staff through our FPU Front Page, a quasi- 
website maintained on our consular shared drive with many such 
resources and document guides.  In the past, FPU teams made 
frequent visits to regional Boards to check certificates.  We 
have cultivated good relations with Board officials, an effort 
that pays handsome rewards in allowing us great access to the 
Boards.  We regularly sit with these officials to brief them on 
counterfeits and altered documents that we have uncovered and to 
talk about various security features that are slowly being 
incorporated into Board certificates.  We find that historically, 
certificates from the Dhaka, Comilla and Sylhet Boards are the 
most common counterfeits presented by applicants.  In particular, 
we believe there is one counterfeiter who specializes in Comilla 
Board certificates, and we have seen many examples of his work, 
both in Dhaka and in documents referred from Persian Gulf posts 
for verification. 
 
In October 2005, the Ministry of Education took a giant leap into 
the 21st century by establishing a website for on-line 
verification of certificates, www.educationboard.gov.bd.  The 
website allows verification of certificates issued after the 
computerization of Board records, generally from the mid-1990s. 
To access a record, you must enter the Board name, the year of 
the test, the type of test, and the students Roll Number, all of 
which are found on the certificate.  From October 2005 to January 
2006, we ran all Board checks in parallel to verify that the 
results of the on-line check were consistent with the physical 
Board records, and we found that on-line checks had a 100% match 
to the physical records check.  In many suspect certificates the 
biographic information did not match the online check, indicating 
that a physical change may have been done at the Board, after the 
applicant won the DV in order to match the winning DV entry. 
Since the online check is so easy, we have changed our processing 
of DV cases, and the DV unit now conducts a check of all possible 
education certificates before interview.  While we must still 
check older certificates at the Boards, we anticipate a 50% 
reduction in the number of cases referred to the FPU for 
verification.  We will also randomly select one week a quarter 
when all certificates will be sent for physical check in order to 
continue to validate the accuracy of the data base. 
 
Since DV winners automatically become the most eligible of 
potential spouses, many of our cases involve winners who married 
after winning the DV.  As previously discussed, the tradition of 
settled marriages makes it extremely difficult to distinguish 
between traditional arranged marriages and marriages for 
immigration purposes.  Again, we rely on the usual array of 
secondary evidence to establish that a genuine marriage exists. 
 
¶6.  ACS and PASSPORT FRAUD: We have extremely low incidence of 
fraud in these areas.  Rarely, we will have a CRBA case where DNA 
testing shows that the alleged AmCit father is not actually the 
father.  This year, we are aware of three instances where 
imposters attempted to use a US passport to travel to the US. 
One was an imposter case, and the other two are more conventional 
cover or photo-sub cases.  In 2004, we also had four such cases, 
one imposter and three photo- or cover-subs.  However, the most 
recent case has an unusual twist in that the true bearer of the 
cover-subbed passport is a Bangladeshi-American with a history of 
 
DHAKA 00000997  006 OF 008 
 
 
losing passports.  According to PIERS, the holder claimed that 
the passport had been during a home invasion in February 1999. 
However, while reviewing the case, Post FPM found one of the 
other passports in our files that the holder claimed was lost on 
a subway in New York City in September 1994.  The British 
Airline Liaison Officer (ALO) had intercepted the passport in the 
possession of an imposter on November 14, 1994 in Dhaka.  This 
passport had a variety of entry and exit stamps, showing that 
someone entered Bangladesh on May 31, 1994, and then stayed until 
November 14, 1994.  We found it remarkable that the passport was 
lost in New York when it never left Bangladesh. 
 
¶7.  ADOPTION FRAUD:  Adoptions are a difficult proposition in 
n 
Bangladesh.  Bangladesh civil law makes no provision for 
adoptions, and Islamic law prohibits all adoptions and Hindu law 
prohibits almost all adoptions.  The only recourse is for 
Bangladeshi adults to apply for an order of guardianship under 
the 1890 Guards and Wards Act.  Foreigners are not permitted to 
become guardians in this manner.  In some cases, this order can 
form the basis of an IR-4 petition.  Most of our fraud involves 
direct transfers between family members where a relative in the 
US seeks to adopt a cousin or nephew/niece in order to give the 
child a better life in the US.  The family in Bangladesh 
generally tries to fraudulently conceal their standard of living 
in order to qualify the child as an eligible orphan. 
 
There is also a tradition of social adoptions in Bangladesh 
where families take in orphans of relatives or foundlings and 
raise them as their own.  The parents never regularize the 
childs status, and the child may not even be aware of his or her 
er 
actual parentage.  This causes very sad situations when DNA 
testing reveals that one or another child may not be eligible to 
receive a visa in preference cases. 
 
¶8.  ASYLUM and other DHS BENEFIT FRAUD:  Dhaka handles both VISAS 
92 follow-to-join cases and requests for investigation in ongoing 
political asylum cases.  We receive investigation requests both 
from DRL/CRA and directly from some DHS FDNS officers.  Last 
year, we processed more than 100 follow-to-join cases and 
conducted 22 investigations.  In only 3 of our investigations did 
we verify the documents submitted by asylum seekers.  Our files 
are literally bulging with hundreds of cases where the FPU has 
uncovered document fraud in asylum cases. 
 
Officers regularly hear admissions from derivatives that their 
parents or spouses asylum case is bogus.  When pressed to 
describe the persecution that the asylee supposedly suffered, 
most cannot name even a single incident, or if they can describe 
e 
some incidents, they claim that no police report was ever filed. 
Furthermore, we encounter NIV and IV applicants, generally men, 
who have a history of filing a fraudulent asylum claim coupled 
with extensive illegal presence and/or a deportation.  Generally, 
they sheepishly admit that the asylum claim was only a method to 
gain permission to stay in the US.  We have also heard stories of 
immigration lawyers in New York who regularly advised their 
clients to file fake asylum claims under false identities as the 
best way to gain legal status in the US.  All of this leads us to 
view asylum follow-to-join cases with some degree of skepticism. 
However, as per FAM guidance, we suspend our disbelief regarding 
the legitimacy of the basic asylum grant in most VISAS 92 cases 
and merely focus on the derivatives.  As with many IV cases, we 
regularly find cases of probable and suspected age fraud among 
child derivatives.  However, given the generous nature of CSPA 
relief, we rarely investigate these cases.  In the very rare 
instances where we uncover serious information about the basic 
asylum claim, we forward our information to the appropriate DHS 
office for review. 
 
With investigations, we generally are asked to verify police or 
court documents or medical certificates.  As with most 
Bangladeshi documents, police and court documents are easily 
counterfeited.  Fortunately, we have always been able to check 
such documents at police stations and courts, though we always 
 
DHAKA 00000997  007 OF 008 
 
 
strictly adhere to the standards of confidentiality for such 
investigations.  Most often we find that the documents are 
completely fake, though occasionally in cases where the police 
records concern petty crimes, the documents turn out to be 
correct.  Most medical certificates are nearly unverifiable, 
since most clinics and doctors offices keep minimal records. 
Last year the FPM and the Deputy Political Officer drafted an 
information paper on pertinent political and social issues in 
Bangladesh for use by DHS asylum officers.  Hopefully, this 
information will make it easier for DHS officers to more easily 
sort out genuine asylum cases from the vast sea of fraudulent or 
spurious cases. 
 
¶9.  COOPERATION WITH HOST GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES:  Most 
Bangladesh government officials are helpful when approached on an 
individual case basis, such as a school certificate or police 
station check.  However, at present, courts and the police are 
still generally uninterested and unmotivated to take steps that 
would hinder the ability of Bangladeshis to travel abroad in 
search of work.  Addressing this lack of interest has been one of 
the key goals for our new A/RSO-I over the past six months.  Our 
active and energetic A/RSO-I has made remarkable steps in 
strengthening his contacts and our links with the police, 
especially Special Branch which controls officers assigned to 
immigration duties, and the Directorate-General of Passports and 
Immigration with goal of institutionalizing these relationships. 
He has used training opportunities, both post-sponsored and 
Department-sponsored, as his entre in these efforts.  The 
response has been overwhelmingly positive, and we hope to build 
this relationship to the point where the police will actively 
assist with the arrest and prosecution of offenders in serious 
immigration fraud and alien smuggling cases.  As an initial 
indication of his success in forging cooperative relationships 
with the right people in the police, our A/RSO-I recently 
obtained a large number of immigration records requested by the 
FPU for use in a validation study of F1/F2 applicants, the first 
time we have obtained this type of information. 
 
¶10.  AREAS OF CONCERN:  Last year, Chittagong, the major southern 
port city, was identified as a transit point in the ongoing major 
international smuggling of Chinese nationals using Singaporean 
passports.  Lacking any Western diplomatic missions to provide 
de 
airport coverage, mala fide travelers come from Bangkok for 
further passage on to Dubai.  The smuggling ring originally used 
the main international airport in Dhaka, but the efforts of the 
resident British ALO drove them out, forcing them to use the 
smaller airport in Chittagong.  We continue to be greatly 
concerned with the lack of security with Bangladesh documents, 
especially passports, though we have little optimism that the 
government will have either the will or the capacity to 
adequately address the problem in the near future. 
 
Dhaka boasts an active Anti-Fraud Working Group comprised of more 
than 20 members from many diplomatic missions, including all the 
Europeans countries, Australia, Canada and the US.  The group 
regularly exchanges information about mala fide applicants, fake 
documents, and fake document vendors.  The British ALO is an 
essential part of our efforts, providing a constant presence at 
the airport to detect and confiscate fraudulent travel documents 
of all kinds.  Our A/RSO-I is working closely with the British 
ALO to provide additional coverage, when needed. 
 
¶11.  STAFFING AND TRAINING:  Post has a full-time FPM who also 
doubles as the Deputy Consular Chief, a JO back-up, an EFM, and 
four, soon to be five, full-time LES.  Under post policy, all 
fraud investigations are done by a team of one American and one 
FSN.  We are fortunate that our JO and our EFM are both FSI- 
trained Bangla speakers, which helps reduce the possibilities of 
malfeasance or fraud during the conduct of investigations.  The 
FPM and his alternate have taken the FPM course, and three of our 
four investigators have attended the FPU FSN workshop at FSI. 
 
FPM:  Robert J. Jachim (EOD: JUN 2006) 
Alternate FPM: Brian R. Peterson (EOD: SEP 2006) 
EFM:  Mark L. Stillwell 
 
DHAKA 00000997  008 OF 008 
 
 
 
FSN Supervisor: Syed A. Reza 
FSN Investigators:  John B. DCosta, Maske Jannat, and Khan J. 
Ali 
 
The FPM provides detailed training to all newly-arrived officers 
and FSNs on current fraud trends, fraud history, and fraud 
indicators.  The FPU offers a monthly briefing on topics of 
interest and the FPM provides a quarterly briefing/training, 
usually covering the latest fraudulent documents or trends.  The 
FPU also maintains a local quasi-website on our consular shared 
drive with scanned images of genuine and fake school certificates 
and other personal documents, such as marriage and divorce 
certificates.  This information is available from the desktop of 
all computers at the interview window. 
 
¶12.  Dhakas FPU is always ready to offer assistance to other 
posts and agencies with questions regarding Bangladeshi documents 
or applicants.  We can be contacted through individual email or 
through DhakaFPM@state.gov. 
 
 
CHAMMAS