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 
 
¶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