Published on: October 30, 2016 | Last Updated: October 30, 2016 7:03 PM EDT
A one-time Ottawa janitor found guilty of immigration fraud and bribery will be sentenced Monday after trying to sponsor more than 500 refugees on group sponsorship applications, many of them relying on forged bank letters, doctored documents and sponsors who didn’t have a clue their names were appearing on the applications.
Mohamed Farah Abdulle is looking at a possible prison stint of five years or more for the scam that involved applications made between 2006 and 2011 under what is known as the Group of Five (or G5) refugee sponsorship program, where five or more persons commit to sponsor and help support one or more refugee applicants for a one-year period as they settle into life in Canada.
Federal prosecutors proved that Abdulle — described by one Citizenship and Immigration Canada employee as the “most prolific” sponsor he had ever dealt with — collected cash or quid pro quo arrangements with potential sponsors in exchange for filing the applications.
According to the judge’s decision finding him guilty, Abdulle either personally sponsored or acted as the spokesman in 170 sponsorship applications seeking to bring 528 refugees to Canada. Abdulle, a former refugee, was the group leader and sponsor on 131 of those applications, the group representative on 32 applications and was involved in or didn’t deny his involvement in the other seven.
Thirty-seven of his sponsorships were successful, although the judge hearing the case said there was no evidence any of those refugees posed a danger to Canada. Each were separately screened by visa officers over a process that took up to three years and deemed not to be a threat, said Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Beaudoin.
“There was no evidence that any of these refugees who were accepted were criminals or posed security risks,” wrote Beaudoin in a decision finding the 54-year-old Abdulle guilty of seven charges in November 2015.
However, two of the refugees sponsored by Abdulle’s groups testified they paid him $20,000 in exchange for the sponsorships for their relatives or themselves.
What the court decision didn’t explain was how Abdulle was involved so prominently in as many applications as he was before coming under any sort of scrutiny by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Court heard his applications were rife with spelling errors, included potential sponsors who themselves were refugees sponsored by Abdulle only a year earlier, had incorrect phone numbers and addresses, and referenced bank accounts that didn’t exist.
It wasn’t until 2011 that a senior program officer responsible for the G5 sponsorships became concerned about Abdulle’s ability to support all the refugees he was sponsoring. By that point, Abdulle’s groups had pledged close to $1 million in support of the applications that had been approved, the trial heard.
In total, Abdulle’s groups had promised more than $2.9 million in bank account trust funds that had been set aside to sponsor refugees.
CIC stopped processing his applications as the Canada Border Services Agency launched an investigation. What it turned up was evidence of wide-scale fraud by a one-time janitor who never earned more than $40,000 a year.
In an email, Citizenship and Immigration Canada said it had implemented a new database since Abdulle’s arrest called the Global Case Management System, which helps it better monitor applications and detect trends. The intake and in-Canada processing of private sponsorship applications was also centralized at an office in Winnipeg in 2012, it said.
“This was done as part of our efforts to improve inventory management, program integrity and quality control of applications. It also increased operational efficiencies and processing capacity through the optimal use of our human resources and technology (e.g., the Global Case Management System) while decreasing costs in managing the PSR (Private Sponship of Refugees) program,” the department said.
However, CIC said changes made to strengthen the Private Sponsorship of Refugees program weren’t made in response to Abdulle’s arrest, but concerns raised by private sponsors and aimed to reduce processing delays.
Those included regulatory changes requiring a permanent resident application to be submitted along with a sponsorship undertaking and a requirement that limited Group of Five and Community Sponsors to sponsoring applicants who are recognized as refugees by either the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or a state. There was also a change to the definition of what constitutes a complete application, allowing Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to return applications if information is missing.
Abdulle’s crimes weren’t incredibly sophisticated.
The trial heard how the pool of sponsors he used on his applications frequently involved the same people, and documentation to support the groups financial wherewithal to support the refugees was forged.
For example, Abdulle’s own 18-year-old son was listed as a sponsor on 53 different applications and his daughter appeared on 62 different applications. A convicted criminal whose listed address was a community housing building was listed as a potential sponsor on 35 applications. The man testified he had never signed a G5 form in his life and didn’t “consider himself a humanitarian,” according to the judge.
Pay stubs for identical amounts appeared in numerous applications with either the name of the payer changed or with a different employee name. Abdulle’s preferred method for changing the pay stubs was to cut out the employee name or to use white-out. In others, a new employee name was clearly cut and pasted over the name of the original employee. In all, investigators seized 244 variations of 43 different pay stubs.
Eventually, Abdulle started relying on bank letters to support his sponsorship applications. The trial heard evidence that 78 of the bank accounts used in the applications didn’t exist. In another 11, bank employees denied signing letters in support of applications.
Searches also revealed a ledger that showed names that matched some of the sponsors on the applications next to varying amounts of money; one man testified he had paid between $500 and $525 for Abdulle’s help sponsoring a relative.
In another case, a woman testified that she agreed to sponsor Abdulle’s nephew in exchange for Abdulle’s help on a sponsorship for her brother-in-law. Her name was then used on multiple applications for large groups of refugees without her knowledge; she also testified that Abdulle pressured her not to testify against him at the trial.
Another refugee Abdulle helped sponsor testified that she never agreed to sponsor anyone else, yet her name appeared on another sponsorship application.
Evidence entered at trial showed that Abdulle had claimed no income with the Canada Revenue Agency between 2006 and 2011, but had bank accounts with approximately $168,000 in them in 2009.
And while he listed his own address as an Ottawa Community Housing unit on Carsons Road, he drove a new car while his wife lived in a $400,000 house in a subdivision off Navan Road.
Abdulle was already under surveillance by the Canada Border Services Agency by the time he offered to pay the mortgage of a CIC employee or give her gold jewelry in exchange for assistance expediting his applications.
Abdulle told the employee he had inherited money from his father, owned a taxi plate, and bought gold and construction materials from Dubai, which he would sell for a profit in Somali.
Abdulle denied anything untoward and insisted the applications were above-board, but the judge didn’t believe the “evasive and unresponsive” Abdulle and convicted him.
OTTAWA MAN SENTENCED TO OVER 3.5 YEARS FOR IMMIGRATION FRAUD
An Ottawa man has been sentenced to 43 and a half months in prison for filing dozens of fraudulent refugee sponsorship applications.
54-year-old Mohamed Farah Abdulle was found guilty last year of five offences under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, including forging documents and bribery.
The Canada Border Services Agency says Abdulle's conviction follows a complex investigation called Project Vista that was launched back in 2010.
The CBSA says he filed over 170 sponsorship applications for more than 528 people and collected a fee from them for his services ... the fraudulent sponsorship applications were then used to help people get into the country.
"This conviction sends an important message to anyone considering immigration fraud," said CBSA Enforcement and Intelligence Operation s Division Director Jeff Davidson in a release. "The CBSA is committed to ensuring that the integrity of Canada’s immigration system is not compromised by individuals intending to profit from these crimes at the expense of legitimate immigrants seeking to live in Canada."
The CBSA says it became aware of the scheme after receiving a tip from a person whose identity was used without their consent to support sponsorship applications.
