Posted on 03/08/2010 2:54:03 PM PST by freespirited
A California man was charged Monday with operating a ring of illegal test-takers who helped dozens of Middle Eastern nationals obtain U.S. student visas by passing proficiency and college-placement exams for them.
Eamonn Daniel Higgins, 46, of Laguna Niguel made an appearance in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud as immigration agents arrested 16 of his suspected clients who remained in Southern California...
The allegations revealed a potentially dangerous security breach in the country's student visa system and underscored the vulnerability of a tracking process that relies on schools to verify the identities of people taking the mandated exams....
Authorities alleged that over a seven-year period, Higgins collected tens of thousands of dollars from foreign students from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar before he or his accomplices took their exams at 10 Southern California community colleges and universities using doctored IDs.
Higgins charged up to $1,500 per student per exam for passing grades on English proficiency exams, writing assessments, English and math college placement tests, final exams and other college coursework the students needed to obtain their F-1 student visas or to stay current on visas, authorities said.
The scheme operated from 2002 to 2009 at seven Southern California community colleges and three California State University campuses, Kice said.
Higgins, who doesn't have a college degree himself, had so many clients that he recruited about a dozen other people to take the exams as well, authorities allege. No criminal charges have been filed against the other test-takers.
Immigration agents raided Higgins' home in December ... and recovered a computer hard drive that indicated Higgins may have worked with hundreds of foreign students, although authorities have only been able to definitively identify 119 ...
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
There were two arrested for the same thing last week in Florida, at their “language school.”
Amazing how ME’ern student visas tend to be associated with criminal activity. Anyone wanna bet that anything will be done to the students?
bump
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