I find this hard to believe about Visa Lottery

[ML]

Claims that crime rings in Ukraine are winning some of the Visa Lottery picks, then getting money from the winners, forcing them to marry  someone to bring to USA, etc.

How many entries would have to be submitted for how many people, to win one of the slots, and then the winner might not even want to go.  Seems like a long-shot to be a money maker for a crime ring.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/30/ukrainian-crime-rings-exploit-us-visa-lottery/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

[mendeleyev]

Thanks for posting this ML.

Every Western country has issues with visas and organized crime in lesser developed countries but I'm not convinced that this report is accurate.

Just one quick observation: the report stated that a high number of Ukrainian applicants have incorrect addresses. This is not necessarily the evidence of a scam as millions of FSU citizens have incorrect addresses. You may be registered at one address but for personal or practical reasons live somewhere else. A young lady may have inherited an apartment from her father. She rents it for income and lives across town with her grandmother. Does that make her a visa scam?

How many Americans change their drivers licenses every time they move to a different address? Some do but many don't bother until the license is up for renewal.

[TS]

I know for years the USA embassy in Ukraine was allowing criminals visas into the USA for kick back money.  That was stopped a couple years ago when they got busted. 
 
 
 
 
 

[ML]

I know for years the USA embassy in Ukraine was allowing criminals visas into the USA for kick back money.  That was stopped a couple years ago when they got busted.

That is a different situation.  It is completely believable that an individual Interview Officer can be bought.

But the lottery visa thingy is another situation entirely.
There, the chance of any person's number being drawn is miniscule.
A crime group would have to submit tens of thousands of names and info to hope to get one winner.
Then, that one winner would have to be willing and able to pay the 'fee' set by the crime group.

The payoff would be so small, in a probability expected value sense, that whomever suggested it would probably be terminated from the crime group.

[TS]

MIL I think you believing the visa lottery drawing is conducted without manual intervention.  What I posted above was not some clerk causing the fraud.  It was the head of the embassy all the way down.
USA embassy heads make less then 300,000 usd per year.  Their staff makes far less.  So temptation like many politicians to get involved in corruption is high as they do not make a lot of money.  Mafia groups are not submitting a lot of applications to win the various type of visas they want.  Mafia groups just have the right connections. 
The USA took a bunch of fake Jewish criminals in the past from the FSU.  All you "basically" had to do was be Jewish and the USA basically took you.  You could lie and no way to check. I have run into a number of people who came to the USA more than 15 years ago who used this method to get into the USA.  That door was closed but new doors "ways" open all the time.
 
 

[Slumba]

MIL I think you believing the visa lottery drawing is conducted without manual intervention.  What I posted above was not some clerk causing the fraud.  It was the head of the embassy all the way down.
USA embassy heads make less then 300,000 usd per year.  Their staff makes far less.  So temptation like many politicians to get involved in corruption is high as they do not make a lot of money.  Mafia groups are not submitting a lot of applications to win the various type of visas they want.  Mafia groups just have the right connections. 
The USA took a bunch of fake Jewish criminals in the past from the FSU.  All you "basically" had to do was be Jewish and the USA basically took you.  You could lie and no way to check. I have run into a number of people who came to the USA more than 15 years ago who used this method to get into the USA.  That door was closed but new doors "ways" open all the time.

I think you are referring to the Lautenberg Amendment, a professional courtesy from one criminal class (US Congress or Senate) to another.