Keyword: visafraud
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A career criminal was granted a special marriage visa to enter the United States, despite a lengthy list of arrests that span two-decades, only to be charged in this week's murder of a Houston Police officer, according to Houston's mayor and police. Andres Nava-Maldonado is jailed on Capital Murder charges in Tuesday night's death of HPD Senior Officer Henry Canales, 42, during an undercover sting operation in southwest Houston. While he is not the suspected trigger-man, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lycos said he is charged with being involved in the robbery that ended with Canales' death. Police revealed on...
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WASHINGTON: US federal authorities have claimed to have unearthed a major H-1B visa racket with the arrest of at least 11 persons, most of them suspected to be of Indian origin. Though the officials did not reveal the citizenship of those arrested, the names released indicated that almost all of them are either Indian or persons of Indian origin. Vision Systems Group, an IT company headquartered in South Plainfield New Jersey, has been indicted on 10 federal counts including conspiracy and mail fraud charge. Viswa Mandalapu is its CEO and president, according to the information available on the company's website.
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Job cuts by tech firms are putting the controversial H-1B guest-worker program in the spotlight once again. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, kicked off the latest debate in January by publicly calling on Microsoft to prioritize American workers over foreign guest workers as the software giant downsizes. In the wake of Grassley’s letter to Microsoft, questions have been raised about the legality of axing H-1B workers first. And H-1B critics have stepped up their attacks on a program they say makes little sense during a time of corporate belt-tightening. H-1B visas rarely go to exceptional talent and often are used by...
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Two Muslim men from Virginia have been arrested in a FBI sting. They were caught trying to sell a missile that could reach the Pentagon. This comes from the same state where a Saudi school for children was busted preaching hatred towards non-Muslims. Virginia was also the home of the former Virginia Jihad Network.
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Let's imagine it's August 2001. And let's pretend that the Clinton Justice Department never erected the procedural war that, to borrow the words Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick wrote in 1995, went "beyond what is legally required" in obstructing communications between the FBI's intelligence division and its criminal investigators. As a result, let's say the FBI connects its dots. When an intelligence agent realizes terrorists Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi (two of the eventual 9/11 hijackers) are in the country and asks the Bureau's criminal division for help in locating them, headquarters encourages a cooperative effort instead of turning him...
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Last month, the U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo reopened after a four-month investigation that led to the arrest of four employees who allegedly sold visas. This week, investigators flown from Washington, D.C, were still combing through documents and interviewing people at the U.S. Consulate in Juárez, making it clear that visa fraud is far from an unusual occurrence. In fact, the Diplomatic Security Service, part of the State Department, opened 250 visa fraud investigations worldwide since October, officials said. "Visas are really valuable property," said Nida Emmons, the spokeswoman for U.S. Consul Maurice Parker in Juárez. "They are counterfeited, sold...
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Wednesday, March 12, 2003 - MOSCOW, Idaho - This was supposed to be the safe place, the Idaho town that fought the state's stereotype as a haven for white- supremacist and anti-government groups. For sure, that's how Marwan Mossaad felt about Moscow, home to the University of Idaho, where the 25-year-old Egyptian national is majoring in economics and architecture. It's hard to imagine the disconnect between the chaotic streets of Cairo, a city of 16 million people, and Moscow, where the grain elevator at the south end of Main Street is the tallest building in town.Until now, said Mossaad, head...
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<p>SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- A former University of Idaho football player has been arrested as a material witness in an investigation of Islamic charities with possible links to terrorism, FBI agents said Tuesday.</p>
<p>Abdullah Al-Kidd, 30, was arrested Sunday at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., according to two FBI agents who separately spoke on condition of anonymity. He was carrying a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia, court documents show.</p>
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10 Iraqis detained in Jamaica were headed to Belize. 10 Iraqis detained in Jamaica were headed to Belize In news just in, the Associated Press is tonight reporting that ten Iraqi citizens have been detained in Montego Bay, Jamaica and are being interviewed by the U.S. F.B.I.. Their destination? Belize. Let me read the bulletin as we received it just minutes ago: "F.B.I. agents on Tuesday were questioning ten Iraqi men who were detained at Montego Bay's airport, Jamaican police said, but did not say why they are being held. The police detained the ten men on Monday after reviewing...
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<p>February 7, 2003 -- A Brooklyn greeting-card salesman - who worships Osama bin Laden and hopes for another Sept. 11 - masterminded a Muslim immigration ring in which more than 200 people obtained green cards by pretending to be religious workers teaching the Koran, the feds charged yesterday.</p>
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - The owner of an immigration-law firm that filed thousands of work-permit applications with false information and phony signatures was convicted of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. The illegal immigrants, who paid the firm up to $20,000 each, were unaware of the fraud by Capital Law Centers in the green card application process. A federal jury Wednesday convicted Samuel G. Kooritzky, 64, on all 57 counts of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. He faces a probable prison sentence of eight to 10 years and may also forfeit as much as $2.5 million, part of what authorities believe...
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Just talked to my Dad in Panama City who said they have arrested an Arab man trying to get into the Panama City Airport. He had a false German passport and was driving a rental car rented in Boca Raton. The bomb-sniffing dogs deployed at the parking entrance caught him. We figure these thugs are trying to find small town airports where they think the tougher security measures have not yet been implemented. I guess they don't know about Tyndall and Eglin Air Force bases right up the road from this airport! They don't mess around down on the Panhandle. ...
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U.S. embassy official took bribes for Saudi visas - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jeffrey Gold May 21, 2002 | NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- A former employee of a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia where most of the Sept. 11 hijackers got their visas admitted Tuesday that he took money and gifts to provide fraudulent visas to foreigners. Abdulla Noman had no connection to any of the hijackers, 15 of whom got visas legally through the consulate in Jeddah, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Vilker said. "There's no evidence whatever linking him to terrorism,"...
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A California Republican has introduced a new visa reform bill that would require the federal government to employ the latest technology to better categorize and track foreign visitors, including "machine-readable visas containing biometric information." According to a summary of the Visa Entry Reform Act, which was introduced Nov. 6 by Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., if passed it would require the Homeland Security Office, in conjunction with other federal agencies, "to establish and supervise a single computerized database (lookout database) to screen and identify inadmissible or deportable aliens. …" Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif. The bill would also mandate that such ...
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NEW YORK, Feb 20, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Authorities refused to let 31 Yemeni passengers board a flight departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport because they did not have proper visas, the Port Authority said Wednesday. The group was scheduled to take British Airways Flight 116 at 11 p.m. Tuesday to Yemen with a connection in London, Port Authority spokesman Sgt. Jeff Baumbach said. They were barred from the flight and detained after the visa problem came to light, Baumbach said. He said the airline called the FBI, whose Joint Terrorist Task Force responded to investigate. The ...
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MILWAUKEE (AP) Federal authorities have found seven people in Wisconsin suspected of bribing U.S. embassy officials in the Persian Gulf to obtain illegal visas. Six of the seven don't appear to have terrorist ties, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis D. Schmitz. He said little is known about the seventh person, Ahmad Abed Atia, 23, who had been living in Milwaukee. Atia was uncooperative with investigators and has been transferred to Chicago on a federal visa fraud charge, Schmitz said. The seven are part of a larger group of foreigners from Jordan, Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh suspected to have paid at...
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Federal agents swarmed into Arlington yesterday and shut down a massive immigration fraud scheme that allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to obtain permission to work in the United States -- and made millions of dollars for an Arlington lawyer and his colleague -- prosecutors said. Samuel G. Kooritzky, 63, an immigration lawyer and owner of the Capital Law Centers, and Ronald W. Bogardus, 65, an engineer, had submitted nearly 2,700 phony applications since the beginning of last year for "labor certifications" from the state and federal government, according to a 60-page affidavit filed in federal court in Alexandria yesterday. The...
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<p>Federal authorities have detained a Jordanian man they believe was a roommate of at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers after a raid at a Southeast Baltimore home.</p>
<p>Rasmi Al-Shannaq was taken into custody early Monday, apparently for overstaying his visa, according to law enforcement sources and news reports. He is believed to have lived last year with two of the hijackers who were on board American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.</p>
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<p>Federal authorities have 31 Middle Eastern and Asian citizens in custody -- including two Pakistani men arrested in Miami -- and are searching for 28 more in a broadening investigation into the sale of fraudulent visas at the U.S. Embassy in the Persian Gulf country of Qatar, U.S. officials said Tuesday.</p>
<p>The two Pakistanis in Miami and two Jordanians arrested in Baltimore and Detroit are charged with entering the United States on visas that were illegally obtained at the embassy in Doha, Qatar, for bribes of up to $10,000 apiece.</p>
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<p>LAS VEGAS — A Saudi citizen has been arrested in an FBI sting operation for allegedly accepting bribes to issue American visas to Saudi nationals, authorities said Sunday.</p>
<p>Abdulla Noman, who works for the U.S. Department of Commerce issuing visas at the American Consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, was arrested Thursday in a Las Vegas Strip hotel room, authorities said. He is being held in federal custody.</p>
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