Immigration Lawyer vs Immigration Consultant – FRAUD
Recently there is a flurry of media stories where Immigration Counsels have defrauded IRCC and their own clients. In all these stories there are huge differences between Lawyers and Consultants and some similarities that confuse me. Defrauding IRCC or any client is clearly wrong. Is the fraud alleged to be done by Lawyers worse than the fraud alleged to be done by Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants? What similarities do these media stories about alleged fraud have in common?
Let us start with Immigration Lawyer Paul Hesse from Winnipeg who recently got disbarred. The CBC article makes me laugh because it starts with saying this about this Immigration Lawyer “he lost over $6 million of his client’s money”!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/paul-hesse-lawyer-disbarred-law-society-1.5752516
Can you find anything online that states he is facing criminal charges of fraud? For three years this Immigration Lawyer was defrauding his clients so what was the Law Society of Manitoba doing to stop him? Did you notice in the second article from Winnipeg Sun this comment about the Law Society of Manitoba complaint investigation?
“The society has ordered him to pay the $40,000 the society spent to investigate his case”.
As if the Law Society of Manitoba should get their money before anyone he defrauded.
Ley us look at another CBC article about two Regulated Immigration Consultants Rupinder "Ron" Batth and Navdeep Batth.
The fraud alleged by CBSA Officer Sidhu revolves around different schemes to help foreign nationals obtain temporary work permits and permanent residency, as well as getting employers to "pad" applications to hire temporary foreign workers. That these charges stem from a search warrant of their offices in 2017. In early September, the pair was charged with 69 counts under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
· “Batth allegedly misrepresented 26 applicants for fraudulent labour market assessments, ranging from $17,000 to $23,000 and even as high as $60,000.
· Companies got paid to apply for false Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIA’s)
The Royal Bank reported the couple deposited cash totaling $208,200.00 dollars between May 2016 and Jan. 2017. It appears that these Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants got some illegal gains from their fraud but how much were all these Canadian employers paid to falsify their LMIA applications? What has their regulatory body ICCRC been doing about these two since their offices were searched in 2017? Is there even an investigation being done by ICCRC?
Then there is the case of Immigration Lawyer Roger Bhatti and an interpreter Sofiane Dahak of Vancouver facing more than two dozen charges, including forgery, counselling misrepresentation from Vancouver have been charged with making bogus refugee claims following an eight-year investigation. Border Services officials began investigating Bhatti and Dahak in 2012 and executed search warrants on June 4, 2014.
· Neither article clarifies whether the interpreter was employed by the IRB!
· Why did it take CBSA eight years of investigation to lay charges?
Two Regulated Immigration Consultants Carl Benito and his son Charles are facing immigration fraud charges following a year-long investigation by the Canada Border Services Agency. The charges represent 90 instances, of counselling or abetting misrepresentation of facts in immigration matters the CBSA say were linked to an alleged study-permit loan scheme. The alleged offences occurred between November 2015 and June 2018."
· The Immigration Lawyers seem to have allegedly defrauded more money then the Immigration Consultants mentioned. That does not make their alleged crimes any worse.
· The Immigration Consultants and the Immigration Lawyers both did not flee Canada with their illegal gains even after their offices were searched by the authorities years previously. They both seem to think they are too smart to be caught.
TO ALL THE HONEST IMMIGRATION CONSULTANTS AND IMMIGRATION LAWYERS STRUGGLING TO MAKE A LIVING DURING THIS PANDEMIC. WHETHER YOUR A CONSULTANT OR A LAWYER THOSE THAT DEFRAUD IRCC AND THEIR CLIENTS SHOULD BE CONDEMMED EQUALLY.
