The Lottery Fraud,
breaking the rules

Every year, over 8 million
people play the INS lottery. The Department of State computer randomly selects about 50,000 inners who get a green card in
a lottery known as DV (Diversity Visa). The rules to become one of the names in the INS' that are strict, but...

The players are required to follow the detailed form instructions, and there is little room for frauds in this case. Any applicant can only submit one application and must provide: (1) her full name with the family name underlined; (2) the date and place of her birth; (3) her native country, if it is different from her place of birth; (4) the name, date, and place of birth of her spouse and children; (5) her complete mailing address; (6) a 1.5 x 1.5 inch photograph with her name on the back, affixed to the sheet of paper with clear tape; and (7) her signature. Every year, more than 2.5 million applications (more than 30% of the total) are rejected for not following the right procedure.

Intermediaries emerge, trying to help applicants and, sometimes, themselves. Law firms like Canter & Siegel, acting as dealers in this green card casino, have been the main characters in fraud scandals. The firm falsely offered his clients "to increase your chance of winning one of the 55,000 green cards available in the 1994 green card Lottery."

"These operations are totally illegal," says Daryl R. Buffenstein, partner in charge of the national immigration practice group of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP. As one of the writers of key provisions in legislation such as the Immigration Act of 1990, Buffenstein contends that "inevitably frauds happen from time to time."

To bring action against other companies is harder as their techniques become subtler. USAGREENCARD Financial Associates sell online its "Secret Greencard Info-Kit" that is supposed to have "uncovered several ways that you can use to get a green card." The firm charges $49 for the kit, and $79 for a similar package including a green card lottery application that can be downloaded for free from the INS server, while claiming that "last year alone, more than 200,000 GCs (Green-Cards) were issued to people all around the world who used these methods!"

International intermediaries are one of the main sources of fraud, according to immigration attorneys. Russian companies, for example, use the Cyrillic alphabet as a way of increasing the chances of winning. Despite the "one application per person" requirement, some Russian names can be translated to English in different ways (i.e. Petrov, Pietrov, Petrof, Pietrof) something that these companies use to submit four applications

Frauds from inside the system have been rarely unveiled, even though Congressman Lamar Smith pointed out in 1997 that "at some overseas posts, consular officers believe that 50 percent of all visa applications are fraudulent. In other regions, the suspected rate of fraud for specific types of applications is closer to 90 percent."