According to Voice of America, scammers posing as travel agencies have taken control of the Diversity Visa program – which grants citizens of other countries the right to permanent residence in the United States. Each year, the U.S. allocates 55,000 visas, known in Ukraine as the Green Card, for countries with historically low immigration rates to the U.S. Visas are awarded through a lottery that does not consider family or professional ties.
The report, prepared back in September but published only now, after the more than two-week U.S. government shutdown, says that the fraud scheme involving American visas is extremely sophisticated and well-thought-out. First, scammers manipulate the private data of Ukrainian citizens, and then engage in intimidation and extortion of those who fall under their control.
In Ukraine, according to the Office of the Inspector General of the State Department, 'scammers buy, steal, or otherwise obtain the private information of Ukrainian citizens.'
According to the report, scammers possess the private information of 80% of the population of Western Ukraine and continue to enter them into the system for U.S. visas year after year. Often, this entry of information occurs without the citizens' consent, preventing those who want to apply for a Green Card on their own from doing so.
The fact is that the lottery system does not allow the same data to be entered twice. If a citizen thus obtains the right to a visa, the scammers, who possess both the citizen's private data and the system-assigned number, demand money from them. The scammers estimate the cost of such 'services' at $15,000.
The extortion does not end after the visa is issued, even when Ukrainians move to the U.S.
U.S. officials, as stated in the report, try to make it harder to obtain permanent residence visas by including special questions in the application, but this has still not stopped the scammers. The criminal group around obtaining Green Cards continues to thrive in Ukraine.
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