THeBlueCashew

Quote from: "Romero"

QuoteThe details of one of Canada's largest immigration scams were laid bare at a sentencing hearing Friday for three Richmond women who helped hundreds of Chinese applicants lie and cheat their way to permanent residency and citizenship.



The Crown says Jin 'Fanny' Ma, Wen 'Vivian' Jiang and Ming Kun 'Makkie' Wu should spend three years behind bars for the work they did as employees for two unlicensed immigration consulting businesses.



All three have pleaded guilty to immigration offences, fraud and falsely claiming tax refunds.



The mastermind behind the scheme, Xun 'Sunny' Wang, has already been sentenced to seven years in jail. He lost an appeal several weeks ago. The scheme's discovery has resulted in reviews of more than 1,200 immigration files.



The scheme started to unravel in 2010, when immigration officials in Edmonton noticed a strange coincidence concerning applications for renewal of permanent resident cards: 63 people appeared to be living in one house.



"Of course, that raised some suspicions," said Macdonald.



They seized 90 boxes of files,18 computers and 200 passports, ultimately ending up with 12 terabytes of information, including tens of thousands of emails. It took a year to get everything translated.



Macdonald said the records detailed fraud relating to passports, immigration, employment and taxation.



Macdonald read portions of emails tying each of the three women to Wang and the hundreds of clients they were in charge of helping. In addition to various other types of fraud, all three were also coaching clients on what to say to border agents when they came into Canada.



None of the women were licensed to work as immigration consultants. And to make matters even worse, all three earned hundreds of thousands in commission which they didn't declare to Revenue Canada.



As a result, they received tens of thousands of dollars back in tax refunds and collected hefty benefits and tax credits to boot.



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//http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/immigration-fraud-china-canada-1.3826942