Melbourne: Australian authorities are probing a major migration scam and scrutinising the documents of thousands of overseas students after they identified agents involved in providing fake documents to foreigners.
Around 10 registered migration agents were reportedly involved in an organised crime of providing fake documents to foreign students to enable them acquire permanent residency.
These agents have hired a team of seven unregistered "facilitators" to sell false education and work experience documents to international students who were applying for permanent residency, a report in 'The Age' newspaper said.
In what is called the "template scam”, agents buy letterheads and blank certificates from dodgy trade schools and workplaces for AUD 1,000 each, then facilitators fill them out and sell them to students for AUD 5,000 to 15,000.
Immigration department and federal police were investigating the issue, the paper said.
The size and complexity of the scam was "without precedent," it quoted an immigration spokesman as saying.
A federal source said facilitators did the "dirty work"
"If this was the drug trade, you would call them mules," he said.
Investigators said 2,500 international students have used fake documents in Melbourne this year. Up to 5,000 visas could face cancellation within six months as they were granted on illegal paperwork.
The visa holders would be deported or detained, the report said.
Investigators believe a Chinese-born businessman was involved in the scam, which also worked as an identity crime racket to sell students fake passports and birth certificates, earning AUD 1.5 million a year.
A report to Migration Institute of Australia, industry's top body, this year warned of "sophisticated photo-morphing" techniques used in making fake documents.
MIA chief executive Maurene Horder said migration fraud was damaging Australia's reputation in education. She said there were possibly many more people entering Australia illegally through student scams than people smuggling.
The paperwork gives students certificates in trade school courses with 900 hours work experience in a related job.
Investigators have identified 40 allegedly corrupt employers, all restaurants and printing workshops.
The newspaper said it has obtained successfully used fake documents from a lodging house in the northern suburbs posing as a print workshop, claiming to have employed students as graphic pre-press tradesmen.
Some restaurants claiming to have employed cookery students were found to be small takeaway shops.
Two weeks ago investigators seized a USB stick — found in the pocket of jeans in a laundry basket in a suburban house — containing 800 fake work references.
A 24-year-old Chinese-born woman was charged last week with migration fraud offences, including possessing 75 blank templates.
Bureau Report