VZCZCXRO8558
RR RUEHBZ RUEHDU RUEHGI RUEHJO RUEHMA RUEHMR RUEHPA RUEHRN RUEHTRO
DE RUEHFN #0127/01 0930841
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 030841Z APR 09
FM AMEMBASSY FREETOWN
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2563
RUEHPNH/NVC PORTSMOUTH NH 0008
RUEHAR/AMEMBASSY ACCRA 0521
RUEHFT/AMCONSUL FRANKFURT 1513
INFO RUEHZO/AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 FREETOWN 000127 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR CA/FPP, CA/VO/KCC 
ACCRA FOR DHS 
FRANKFURT FOR RCO 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: CMGT CVIS CPAS ASEC KFRD SL
SUBJECT:  Fraud Summary - Freetown 
 
Ref:  08 STATE 074840 
 
--------------------------- 
Country Conditions 
--------------------------- 
 
¶1.  Freetown is a high fraud post.  Despite much progress since the 
end of an 11-year civil war in 2001, Sierra Leone is ranked last on 
the UN Human Development Index.  As such, socioeconomic conditions 
for many residents are poor and many people seek a better life 
elsewhere.  There is a large diaspora of Sierra Leoneans throughout 
the world, especially in the U.S. and UK.  Sierra Leoneans often 
expect, and receive, remittances from extended family members living 
in wealthier countries.  Furthermore, many Sierra Leoneans will try 
to join their family members abroad, legally or illegally. 
Corruption is present at all levels of society, particularly in 
government.  It is therefore easy to obtain authentic documents with 
false information, sometimes by bribing officials. 
 
--------------------------- 
NIV Fraud 
--------------------------- 
 
¶2.  Most NIV fraud consists of false bank statements and invitation 
letters.  This usually results in a 214(b) refusal rather than a 
formal investigation by the Fraud Prevention Unit (FPU).  However, 
over half of NIV cases referred to the FPU are confirmed as fraud. 
B visas constitute eighty-four percent of all applications.  Of the 
rest, only F visas (6.1%), G visas (2.8%), and A visas (2.2%) each 
exceed two percent of the visa caseload.  Within these categories, 
the most disconcerting is relationship fraud for official and 
diplomatic dependants.  Diplomats and officials, including very 
high-level emissaries, commonly make fraudulent claims regarding 
biological and adopted children in order to bring them to the U.S. 
These claims are always supported by Notes Verbale, which are 
another area of concern to us and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 
Post has received both unauthorized and fraudulent Notes Verbale 
supporting official and non-official visa applications.  Students 
typically apply for visas to attend schools selected due to a family 
member living nearby or being on the school staff, suggesting the 
possibility that the student application is a cover for intending 
immigrants.  Students can rarely explain their rationale in 
selecting a university.  Several of the relatively few high school 
student exchange visitors and conference participants have not 
returned from the U.S., with or without attending the intended 
program first.  Little-known and unvetted Sierra Leonean 
organizations usually find program participants, and are likely 
responsible for organizing the alien smuggling under the unwitting 
aegis of well-meaning, established U.S. entities. 
 
Document fraud is very common.  Official documents are rarely forged 
since authentic documents with false information are easily 
obtained.  For example, late or delayed birth certificates based on 
reports from the "parents" are often issued many years after the 
child is born.  With this birth certificate, a passport is obtained. 
 At least once a month, IDENT and FR hits uncover an applicant with 
a second identity. 
 
--------------------------- 
IV Fraud 
--------------------------- 
 
¶3.  Embassy Dakar processes Sierra Leone's Immigrant Visas. 
 
--------------------------- 
DV Fraud 
--------------------------- 
 
¶4.  Embassy Abidjan processed Sierra Leone's Diversity Visas until 
the last week of the reporting period.  Embassy Freetown did not 
process enough DV cases in this reporting period to comment 
significantly. 
 
--------------------------- 
ACS and U.S. Passport Fraud 
--------------------------- 
 
¶5.  There has been little U.S. passport fraud, other than occasional 
photocopies of U.S. passports of alleged inviting relatives 
presented during visa interviews.  One imposter was turned back 
twice at the local airport with someone else's U.S. passport, before 
the passport was returned to the Embassy.  The supposed mother of 
this imposter also came to the Embassy claiming an older sister was 
born in the United States, and thus eligible for a passport. 
 
--------------------------- 
 
FREETOWN 00000127  002 OF 004 
 
 
Adoption Fraud 
--------------------------- 
 
¶6.  Embassy Dakar processes Sierra Leone's adoptions. 
 
--------------------------- 
Use of DNA Testing 
--------------------------- 
 
¶7.  Due to CRBA cases often coming from non-traditional family 
situations and unreliable birth certificates, DNA testing is 
recommended in about 70% of cases.  In about 15-20% of those, the 
blood relationship has been disproved, and in about 10% of cases, 
applicants have abandoned the application after DNA testing was 
recommended.  Post also handles DNA testing for DHS upon request, 
but does not usually receive the results. 
 
---------------------------------- 
Asylum and Other DHS Benefit Fraud 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  V92 and V93 cases are not processed by Embassy Freetown.  Most 
are processed by Embassy Conakry or Embassy Dakar.  Embassy Freetown 
also receives many requests for transportation letters from LPRs who 
have lost or stolen I-551s.  Airline security denied boarding to 
several imposters using other persons' I-551s. 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
Alien Smuggling, Trafficking, Organized Crime, Terrorist Travel 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶9.  Post has seen several instances of alien smuggling where an 
adult chaperone accompanies teenagers ostensibly bringing students 
for an exchange program or conference.  In some instances where the 
visas were issued, the children never returned. 
 
-------------------------------- 
DS Criminal Fraud Investigations 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  The consular section referred only one issue--a bribe offer to 
a LES--in the last six months to RSO for investigation.  The 
referral was handled informally over e-mail.  RSO is still 
investigating. 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
Host Country Passport, Identity Documents, and Civil Registry 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶11.  PASSPORT:  The Sierra Leonean passport in production since 2001 
has a machine-readable bio page with a photo-digitized picture 
(large and small) and signature.  Older passports were declared 
obsolete in 2002.  Post does not have any specimens.  Applicants 
must present a birth certificate and national ID card and, in 
theory, come for an interview.  However, false breeder documents are 
easily obtained and are not verified by the Immigration Office. 
There are three passports: regular (passport numbers beginning with 
the letter "O"), service (passport numbers beginning with "S"), and 
diplomatic (passport letters beginning with "D").  The three 
passport types are very similar except for the word "Service" or 
"Diplomatic" on the cover above "Passport."  All inside pages have 
watermarks and the passport number hole-punched at the top. 
Passports contain the following UV luminescent features: 
 
-- Cross-hatching on inside covers 
-- Crest and hidden lion on inside front cover 
-- Hidden passport number on page 1 (regular passports only) 
-- Page numbers and a square at the edge of each page, starting at 
the top and moving down each page until the center of the book, then 
back up. 
--  Sierra Leone Crest at the bottom of each page and "Republic of 
Sierra Leone" near the top. 
--  Monochrome binding string, between pages 16 and 17. 
 
 
ID CARD:  Government contractors produced machine-readable National 
ID cards from 2000 to 2004.  The GoSL has not contracted a new 
company to produce them yet.  While there are theoretically records 
of these cards, since the contractor is not involved anymore, there 
is no way to verify them.  Older, non-machine-readable, cards had no 
records at all.  Both cards are easily photo-subbed.  In lieu, the 
National Registration Secretariat now issues letters signed by the 
Chief or Deputy Registrar and with a passport size photo attached, 
asking the bearer to be excused of any requirement for an ID card. 
The letter is not laminated, nor is it registered, allowing for very 
easy forgery and nearly impossible registration. 
 
FREETOWN 00000127  003 OF 004 
 
 
 
BIRTH CERTIFICATES:  Birth certificates come in several varieties, 
depending on when the birth is registered: 
 
-- 0 to 30 days: original 
-- 31 days to 1 year: late 
-- Over 1 year: delayed 
 
Certified true copies, which are transcriptions of the information 
in the registers rather than facsimiles of the original certificate, 
are available.  Often, the registrar's office will issue a delayed 
certificate instead of a certified copy as they can charge more for 
the delayed certificate and it does not require a record check. 
Also, applicants may obtain a delayed certificate with false 
information.  All birth certificates are printed on paper stock with 
a single-colored pattern background.  The registrar fills the data 
in handwriting, and then stamps and signs.  While post occasionally 
sees forged birth certificates, authentic certificates with false 
information are so easy to obtain that the latter are much more 
common. 
 
Most Sierra Leoneans do not register births, especially if the child 
is born outside of a hospital or health center.  At the hospitals 
and health centers, nurses record births but parents must take these 
forms to the nearest Office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths 
for registration, which most parents fail to do.  Some parents do 
not have birth records because most provincial records were 
destroyed during the war.  In order to give a fair chance to those 
who were not registered and to facilitate registration of births, 
there was a mass free registration of children aged 0 to 18 on June 
20 to 21, 2003 in commemoration of the Day of The African Child. 
All birth certificates issued during this period had the prefix 
"DAC" followed by a number.  Records for DAC registrations are 
unreliable difficult to access, and therefore especially prone to 
fraud. 
 
DEATH CERTIFICATES:  Death certificates are equally easy to obtain. 
Birth and death certificates are issued by the Office of the 
Registrar of Births and Deaths, which has a head office in downtown 
Freetown and sub-registries at health centers in other parts of 
Freetown and the provincial towns and villages.  In theory, one 
should present a medical report of death and can give information on 
the death orally or in writing.  If done orally, the registrar 
enters the information in the prescribed form, reads it out to 
informant and asks the informant to sign.   This should be done 
within fourteen days of the death so that the Registrar can issue a 
burial permit. 
 
EDUCATIONAL DOCUMENTS:  West African Senior School Certificate 
Examinations (WASSCE) and the preceding General Certificate of 
Education Ordinary Levels (GCE O-Levels) statements of result, 
issued by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), are perhaps 
the sole Sierra Leonean documents that are easily and reliably 
verifiable.  The WAEC country director insists that all statements 
of results for U.S. visa purposes go through Embassy Freetown, so 
other posts should not accept results presented directly by the 
applicant.  The WASSCE replaced the GCE O-Levels in 2000, and can be 
verified online using a cheap prepaid scratch-off card.  About 30 
percent of certificates checked are false.  Unfortunately, there is 
no easy way to distinguish results between multiple people with the 
same name, leaving the door open for fraud.  WAEC's other exams, 
taken after primary school (NPSE) and ninth grade (BECCE) can be 
equally checked at the WAEC office.  Other school records are far 
less reliable and very prone to fraud as applicants frequently bribe 
school officials or generate documents from schools which do not 
keep sufficient records. 
 
REGISTRIES:  When registry volumes are full, they are sent to the 
Freetown main office, allowing the FPU to verify registrations 
relatively easily.  However, verification of certificates only 
proves that the events are properly registered, not that they 
actually took place.  Among birth and death certificates verified, 
over 90 percent come back as properly registered, but field 
investigations often prove that registered events never occurred. 
 
-------------------------------------------- 
Cooperation with Host Government Authorities 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶12.  Post has interacted with host government authorities on a 
limited basis on fraud matters.  Post has established new, more 
stringent, verification procedures with the Administrator and 
Registrar-General, who supervises marriage, divorce, business, and 
property records.  Given the generally ineffective and often corrupt 
local judiciary, reliable fraud prosecution is unlikely. 
 
 
FREETOWN 00000127  004 OF 004 
 
 
--------------------------- 
Areas of Particular Concern 
--------------------------- 
 
¶13.  All areas of concern have been addressed elsewhere in this 
telegram. 
 
--------------------- 
Staffing and Training 
--------------------- 
 
¶14.  The Deputy Consular Section Chief serves as Fraud Prevention 
Manager in addition to his other duties, including managing the new 
IV unit, adjudicating visas and providing American citizen services. 
 He has not received any formal fraud training beyond what is 
included in the Basic Consular Course.  There are two FPU LES staff. 
 The senior of the two also handles federal benefits services, and 
is the lead cashier on DV days, though these duties will transfer to 
the future full-time cashier.  Both FPU LES staff have taken the FSN 
Fraud Prevention Workshop (PC542) at FSI and Detecting Fraudulent 
Documents (PC544) online.  The FPU primarily handles the large load 
of investigations for IV cases from Dakar, DV cases from Abidjan 
(recently transferred to post), V92/V93 cases from Conakry, and 
various requests from DHS in petition or adjustment of status cases. 
 The caseload can at times be overwhelming, particularly when the 
annual DV deadline approaches. 
 
PERRY