Iraqi man’s guilty plea reveals massive scope of refugee fraud ring:
A special program giving Iraqi refugees direct access to the U.S. remains shut down a year after authorities revealed a massive fraud ring operating inside the government, and new court documents are shedding light on just how bad the situation was.
Aws Abduljabbar, an Iraqi man who had been living in Jordan, pleaded guilty last week to running the fraud ring. He admitted that he paid two Homeland Security Department employees to steal files from the government’s refugee database. He then used those files to coach would-be refugees on how to rewrite their cases to make them more sympathetic and more likely to win approval, prosecutors said.
The scam likely touched thousands of cases over eight years or so and forced the State Department in January 2021 to suspend the P-2 Iraqi refugee program, as it’s known. What was originally supposed to be a 90-day pause has stretched to more than a year as the Biden administration tries to cauterize the wound.
In the meantime, legitimate refugee candidates likely have been stranded.
It wasn’t just the refugee program that Abduljabbar was scamming.
As they were building the case against him, investigators discovered Abduljabbar was also orchestrating a marriage fraud operation, a sort of backup plan for those who failed to get into the U.S. as a refugee or some other way. Agents said in court documents that the operation charged tens of thousands of dollars to arrange fake relationships for Iraqis and Jordanians to give them a path to the U.S. --->READ MORE HERE
Iraqi national pleads guilty to defrauding US refugee program: Justice Dept:
The Iraqi was charged along withy two others in an alleged scheme that stretched to Jordan and Russia, U.S. authorities say
A Iraqi national has pleaded guilty to defrauding U.S. refugee programs, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
The suspect, identified as Aws Muwafaq Abduljabbar, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, according to a department news release.
Abduljabbar is accused of leading the conspiracy, which involved two other foreign nationals and used "sensitive, non-public information" to help applicants get admission into the U.S. fraudulently, according to the Justice Department.
Abduljabbar and the two other individuals – identified as Haitham Isa Saado Sad, 43, and Olesya Leonidovna Krasilova, 44 – were charged with conspiracy to steal U.S. government records and to defraud the United States, theft of U.S. government records, and conspiracy to launder money, according to an indictment unsealed Saturday. --->READ MORE HERE
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