VZCZCXYZ0000
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHOS #0159/01 1260744
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 050744Z MAY 08
FM AMCONSUL LAGOS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9888
INFO RUEHUJA/AMEMBASSY ABUJA 9602
RUEHPNH/NVC PORTSMOUTH 0413

UNCLAS LAGOS 000159 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR CA/FPP, AF/W, KCC, DS/ICI/OCI, DS/IP/AF 
 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KFRD CVIS CMGT ASEC NI
SUBJECT: FRAUD SUMMARY - LAGOS FIRST QUARTER 2008 
 
REF: 07 STATE 171211 
 
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COUNTRY CONDITIONS 
------------------ 
 
¶1.  Background:  Nigeria covers 356,669 sq miles and has a 
population of approximately 144 million.  The major languages are 
English (official), Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa.  Approximately 60% of 
the population is below the poverty line for Nigeria.  The current 
GDP is 1,500 dollars, and the inflation rate is 8.2%.  This high 
poverty rate, coupled with the population pressures, induces 
large-scale migration. 
 
¶2.  Nigeria has very limited internal controls over the issuance of 
documents, to include passports.  The lack of controls and a high 
incidence of bribery that permeates every level of society create an 
environment where anything and everything is available and for sale. 
 With enormous hunger for visas as an escape route, documents that 
cannot be trusted, and security situations that make travel 
difficult, Lagos is a high-fraud post. 
 
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NIV FRAUD 
--------- 
 
¶3.  The NIV unit continues to see fraudulent documents submitted to 
create the impression of an established travel history.  NIV 
officers have encountered many different varieties of fake visas - 
Schengen, Canadian, Chinese, Indian, South African, and so forth - 
along with hand-carved entry and exit stamps, all intended to 
bolster a weak or non-existent travel history. After the NIV 
officers make their determinations in these cases, the ARSO/I 
frequently speaks with the applicants regarding their document 
supplier and then hands them over to the Nigerian police. 
 
¶4.  Post's ARSO/I recently aided the Nigerian police in the exposure 
and arrest of a counterfeit visa producer.  The Italian Consulate 
contacted the ARSO/I about a suspect Nigerian passport that had a 
U.S. Teslin foil visa issued in it.  As the bearer of the passport 
was being escorted to the U.S. Consulate, a man claiming to be her 
brother followed, and he was asked to accompany her.  Through 
questioning it became clear that he was not her brother, but rather 
the man who supplied her with the photosubbed passport.  They both 
were turned over to the police, and after questioning the man led 
the ARSO/I and the Nigerian police to the counterfeiter.  They 
uncovered and seized a large number of fake Schengen visas of 
surprisingly high quality, as well as some Canadian visas and a U.K. 
passport in the process of being doctored. 
 
¶5.  IAFIS results have revealed previously-undisclosed criminal 
histories.  Applicants who were arrested for and convicted of 
controlled substance violations in the 1980s and early 1990s have in 
some instances been issued multiple nonimmigrant visas in the 
interim despite their permanent ineligibilities because there was no 
record in the CLASS system.  IAFIS has enabled post to detect these 
people and deny them the visas for which they are not eligible. 
 
¶6.  R1 religious worker visas continue to be a point of concern.  In 
the case of large religious groups such as the Catholic Church, 
there are established organizations with which we can work to verify 
the claims of applicants in Nigeria and the receiving church in the 
United States. Smaller churches, such as the evangelical sects, 
present more of a problem when it comes to authenticating documents 
and membership.  The ongoing investigation by DHS into the Redeemed 
Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Texas has meant that officers have 
been refusing R1 applicants for that organization under 221g pending 
the outcome.  Since beginning this practice, post has seen 
applicants for other petition-based NIVs, mostly H1Bs, who are going 
to work for consulting and accounting firms whose clients include 
the RCCG; post has refused these applicants under 221g as well. 
 
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IV FRAUD 
-------- 
 
¶7.  The bulk of the FPU's resources are devoted to unearthing fraud 
for IV and DV cases.  FPU conducts field investigations to verify 
the validity of submitted documents and claimed relationships.  FPU 
investigators have built up a stable of trustworthy contacts in 
various regions of the country over the years.  These have proven an 
invaluable resource, as Nigeria is a country where the public 
officials themselves are often implicated in the deception, whether 
through ignorance of their own laws or through actual corruption. 
 
 
¶8.  F-1 unmarried adult children of American citizens continue to be 
a source of fraud investigations.  Field visits by our investigators 
routinely find purportedly unmarried F-1s living with a spouse and 
children. Applicants also attempt to thwart our efforts at a field 
investigation by providing false contact information, which 
unfortunately adds to the duration of the investigation. 
 
¶9.  IR-2 stepchildren also present a challenge. The typical case 
involves a parent who travels to the United States on a visitor visa 
and then divorces the Nigerian spouse shortly after traveling or in 
some cases shortly before departure.  The parent finds an American 
citizen spouse, whom they marry to adjust status, and then the 
American citizen petitions for the children in Nigeria as 
stepchildren.  FPU utilizes a number of tools to combat this fraud. 
CCD searches show whether or not left-behind spouses have been 
issued a visa themselves, while Lexis-Nexis allows us to see if the 
petitioner and biological parent are listed as living together.  An 
FPU field investigation shows whether or not the surrounding 
community is aware of the divorce, and whether or not the biological 
parent in the United States is carrying on a relationship with the 
left-behind. 
 
-------- 
DV FRAUD 
-------- 
 
¶10.  Educational qualifications continue to be a fraud concern for 
the DV.  Post has found an established fraud trend wherein 
applicants finish secondary school a decade before winning the DV, 
and the scores for their West African Examinations Council (WAEC) 
exam, usually taken at the end of their final year, are very poor. 
Flash forward to the present, when they win the DV lottery and 
decide to re-take the exam after some 'private tutoring.'  These 
scores are very strong, but when the applicant comes for his 
interview he knows nothing about the subjects in which he supposedly 
excelled just months before. We have had a number of applicants 
confess under questioning in the FPU that they had assistance in 
completing the exam; in some cases, they were assisted by a fellow 
test taker.  More alarmingly, in some cases they claim the test 
proctor read off the correct answers.  In such instances the 
documents are good and, were we to verify them, would be found 
legitimate, but the applicants have no claim to the scores on them. 
 
¶11.  Lagos also sees a large number of 'clip-ons,' spouses acquired 
after entering the DV lottery.  Many of these prove to be fraudulent 
relationships.  While FPU conducts some field visits to determine 
the validity of relationships, in many cases a simple split 
interview in the FPU offices suffices to verify relationships. 
 
¶12.  Lagos has recently encountered cases that confirm our long-held 
suspicion that there exist entrepreneurs in Nigeria who act as 
full-service diversity visa fixers, from filling out the initial 
entry form to preparing the document package to coaching for the 
actual interview, along the way clipping on spouses to previously 
single entrants to increase revenue. 
 
¶13. In one recent case, a female applicant entered the DV as single. 
 When she was scheduled for an interview and her case file received 
at post, it showed that she was married and included a marriage 
certificate and a DS-230 for her spouse.  It also had an extra 
DS-230 for her, stamped as received at KCC four days after her own 
DS-230, with a different photograph and different names for her 
parents.  When the applicant was called to the window, she 
maintained that she was not and had never been married, and she did 
not recognize either of the extra photographs included in her case 
file. 
 
¶14.  The applicant explained that she had entered the DV lottery by 
filling out a paper form; a man had come to the village where she 
lived and handed out the forms to everybody there.  He filled his 
own contact information on her entry, and when her name was 
selected, her letter and form packet went to him.  In order to 
obtain her packet, she was forced to pay 20,000 Naira (the 
equivalent of about $160) in order for him to release it to her. She 
mailed her DS-230 to KCC, along with a change of address request, 
and refused further contact with the visa fixer.  It is clear that 
the visa fixer received extra money from the 'husband' to clip him 
on to this single woman's entry; when she did not cooperate, he 
attempted to replace her on the entry as well. 
 
--------- 
ACS FRAUD 
--------- 
 
¶15.  Financial scams - known as '419' scams after the section of the 
Nigerian penal code relating to financial crime - continue to be a 
huge issue for ACS.  The ACS Unit receives an average of 20 
inquiries daily through e-mail and telephone from American citizens 
as well as citizens from other countries who have been defrauded by 
Nigerians posing as romantic interests, Americans in distress, or 
lawyers trying to disburse a settlement or inheritance. Some of 
these American citizens have sent large sums of money to Nigeria. 
Unfortunately, all we can do is refer them to the Economic and 
Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria and the Secret Service in the 
United States. 
 
¶16.  The U.S. passport continues to be a highly coveted document. 
One recurring scenario is the first-time passport applicant who is 
in his late teens.  The applicant will provide a birth certificate 
for a child born in the United States, as well as perhaps an infant 
passport, or the passport of the purported mother with the child 
endorsed in it.  FPU does field investigations to verify the 
identity of the applicant as that listed on the birth certificate. 
 
¶17. Post also sees many applications for Consular Reports of Birth 
for the children of recently-naturalized male American citizens.  In 
order to qualify as an American citizen from birth, a child must be 
born after the American citizen has naturalized, and in some of the 
applications the timing is very close.  In one case, FPU 
investigators went to the hospital in question to verify the 
hospital documents the mother submitted as evidence of birth for the 
baby.  The investigators found that the registration number on the 
documents was in the hospital's records for another woman; the 
hospital records and birth certificate were not legitimately issued. 
 The parents had attempted to move the child's birth date forward in 
order for him to qualify for citizenship. 
 
-------------- 
ADOPTION FRAUD 
-------------- 
 
¶18.  Local courts continue to issue suspect adoption orders.  In 
order to be a valid adoption under Nigerian law, adoptive parents 
must fulfill certain requirements, including but not limited to 
three months of custody of the child prior to the adoption order, as 
well as a personal appearance in court on the day the adoption is 
finalized.  These requirements are frequently ignored by Nigerian 
courts, resulting in procedurally-invalid adoptions. 
 
¶19.  Starting in 2006, all adoptions coming through ConGen Lagos 
went a mandatory field investigation to ensure that the laws of 
Nigeria and the United States were followed during the adoption 
process.  Our investigators would conduct a home visit to see if the 
child is living with the appointed guardian or with the biological 
parents who have supposedly relinquished all parental rights, and 
they go to the court registrars to see if the order was actually 
issued by the court.  An analysis of the order itself could show 
whether or not the court followed its own procedures correctly. 
 
¶20.  This policy resulted in a greatly-protracted processing time 
for adoption visas, and the rate of fraud uncovered was not 
commensurate with the resources expended; only about 10% to 20% of 
the investigations were uncovering fraud that precluded visa 
issuance.  Post therefore has loosened the policy to allow 
interviewing officers more discretion.  We have conducted training 
sessions with interviewing officers and FPU investigators to help 
familiarize officers with what a good adoption looks like, and what 
indicators should prompt an FPU investigation.  We have also created 
reference documents the officers can consult at the window to help 
guide their interviews.  We hope that this will allow faster 
processing of strong cases while at the same time freeing up FPU 
resources for investigations into cases that are truly problematic. 
 
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DNA TESTING 
----------- 
 
¶21.  DNA testing has proven an invaluable tool in the deterrence of 
fraud.  There are many instances where the evidence of relationship 
that would allow officers to make their decisions is unreliable, 
destroyed, or simply not available. Family photography, aside from 
the occasional posed studio portrait, did not become widespread 
until the late 1970s and early 1980s, and birth certificates have no 
security features to speak of and can be obtained easily.  Officers 
request DNA testing fairly frequently.  The samples, in the form of 
cotton swabs, are collected by an IV LES at the clinic where the 
required visa medical examinations are conducted.  This is a duty 
that is rotated around the section.  The Consulate sends the samples 
to the laboratory, and the notarized results are returned directly 
back to the Consulate via courier. 
 
¶22.  Applicants who know their relationship is not bona fide, in 
general, do not follow through with the DNA testing.  Post has 
encountered several recent cases where a principal applicant was 
asked to do a DNA test with a derivative child, only for the 
principal applicant to return to the Consulate and say that they 
changed their mind - they don't want the child to travel after all. 
As the principal applicant has by this point executed a visa 
application for the derivative, a fake parent-child relationship 
constitutes alien smuggling; as a result, principal applicants are 
told there will be no issuance until the requested DNA testing is 
completed.  In some cases, the principal applicant acquiesces and 
the DNA results are negative, resulting in a 6E finding.  Other 
principal applicants attempt to remove the problematic child by 
'killing them off' on paper - bringing in a fraudulent death 
certificate.  FPU investigation into these documents reveals the 
fraud, and the end result is still a 6E. 
 
--------- 
DHS FRAUD 
--------- 
 
¶23.  We continue to receive about ten requests a week for 
transportation letters from legal permanent residents who report 
their green cards lost or stolen.  Without DHS presence at post or 
access to their database, we struggle to confirm LPR status and 
determine if the LPRs have a criminal record. 
 
¶24.  The FPU receives and processes investigation requests from 
USCIS District Adjudicating Officers (DAOs) to verify documents 
submitted for many different types of petitions in the United 
States, from birth and death certificates to divorce decrees.  The 
FPU assists with these verifications, although resources are a 
constant issue.  FPU always reminds the DAOs of the limitations - as 
the threshold of proof for many of these documents is so low, a 
positive finding regarding document authenticity is often no 
guarantee that the information contained therein is at all 
reliable. 
 
------------------------------- 
ALIEN SMUGGLING AND TRAFFICKING 
------------------------------- 
 
¶25.  In both the IV and NIV section we see frequent attempts at 
alien smuggling, whether through a sham marriage or the addition of 
an extra child.  In some cases it is merely a member of the extended 
family who simply does not have a legal claim to the immigration 
benefit.  However, in some cases, such as the DV clip-ons, there is 
a financial motivation; someone has agreed to pay in order to have 
that person added to an otherwise-legitimate application. 
 
----------------- 
DS INVESTIGATIONS 
----------------- 
 
¶26.  The consular section in general and the FPU in particular work 
closely with the ARSO/I recently assigned to Lagos.  Cases are 
referred to the ARSO/I from IV, NIV, and ACS units, with the 
referral documented in the notes for the case.  The ARSO/I has aided 
us in pursuing marriage fraud rings stateside through his U.S.-based 
DS contacts, and here in Lagos he has been pursuing the vendors of 
the fraudulent documents presented in interviews.  His close working 
relationship with the Special Fraud Unit of the Nigerian police has 
resulted in the arrest of a number of fraudulent applicants. 
Through spot reports he keeps the consular section informed of the 
outcomes of the referred cases.  The ARSO/I usually takes referrals 
directly from interviewing officers regarding instances of fraud 
that occur on a daily basis, while complex investigations that FPU 
has conducted are referred to the ARSO/I by the FPM.  ARSO/I and the 
FPM have a strong working relationship and often collaborate on 
interviews, investigations and training.  ARSO/I and FPM also 
benefit from the strong support of the Consular Chief and the 
Regional Security Officer. 
 
---------------------- 
HOST COUNTRY DOCUMENTS 
---------------------- 
 
¶27.  While Nigeria has recently updated its passport design to 
incorporate a microchip like the U.S. E-Passport, the older design 
remains valid and in circulation.  It consists of a biodata page 
encased in plastic, UV-reactant features, and the passport number 
punched into the top edge of the inside pages. 
 
¶28. The new e-passport incorporates other security features in 
addition to the microchip.  It includes holographic and UV-reactant 
features, and each visa page in the booklet has the passport number 
punched into the outside edge.  It is important to note that, while 
the document itself may appear more secure, the underlying process 
in order to obtain the passport remains highly flawed.  Applicants 
for a Nigerian passport must submit a national identification card 
or a birth certificate, both of which are easily obtained on the 
open market, and they must submit an affidavit from a 'guarantor' 
who will attest to their good character.  Attempts by Nigerian 
immigration to use biometrics collection to preclude passport 
issuance in multiple identities are hampered by the lack of 
infrastructure that would allow a passport office in one end of the 
country to connect via a network to an office on the other end. 
Even with the additional security features, the Nigerian passport 
remains an insecure and easily obtainable document. 
 
¶29.  Civil documents, by contrast, have essentially no security 
features.  Marriage certificates vary widely in appearance; while 
they follow the same basic format, each local government authority 
has its own design.  Marriage certificates and birth certificates 
are both filled out by hand in ball point pen, and are printed on 
plain white paper.  These documents are incredibly easy to forge. 
In addition, controls and oversight in government offices are such 
that for sufficient payment a person can obtain virtually any 
government document from the source.  With very few exceptions, 
documents are taken with a grain of salt, and without verification 
by FPU that there is a corresponding entry in the logbook of the 
office that supposedly issued the certificate or court order, we 
consider most documents to be of very little value. 
 
--------------------------------- 
COOPERATION WITH HOST GOVERNMENT 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶30.  The FPU has enjoyed a strong relationship with the Nigerian 
Police Department for many years, referring cases to them where 
Nigerian laws have been broken.  The Special Fraud Unit has aided in 
the arrest of applicants who have presented fraudulent documents, as 
well as tracking down the document vendors. 
 
¶31.  The FPU has also enjoyed years of support from local 
governments, schools and marriage registries in our verifications of 
documents.  Lately, however, FPU investigators have been harassed by 
National Population Commission to provide money for verifications, 
usually 10,000 Naira, the equivalent of about 70 dollars.  This is 
apparently a revenue collecting scheme on the part of the National 
Population Commission.  In some cases, the working relationship 
between the investigator and the official, with whom they have dealt 
before, has meant the registrar could be persuaded to waive the fee; 
many of these government officials, however, are becoming more 
hard-line on this fee, making document verification a costly 
prospect. 
 
--------------------- 
STAFFING AND TRAINING 
--------------------- 
 
¶32.  The FPU comprises FSO Fraud Prevention Manager Jennifer White, 
LES Fraud Investigator Supervisor Roma Eyen, LES Fraud Investigator 
Adedamola Ajibade, LES Fraud Investigator Ijeoma Ndurue, LES 
Secretary Chinyere Harry, LES Fraud Analyst Samuel Olorunsogo and 
 
SIPDIS 
LES Data Specialist Fineboy Mark.  Ms. Ajibade completed the FSN 
Fraud Prevention Workshop in March 2007 and Ms. Eyen attended the 
regional consular FSN workshop in April 2007. 
 
BLAIR