A West Australian Court convicted Paul Gregory Harrison for stealing, fraud, receiving a fee for providing migration agent services when he was not qualified, for false documents and forging papers.
He was sentenced to seven years’ jail after being convicted over the criminal and migration fraud offences. Harrison received four years’ jail for 26 criminal fraud and stealing offences and three years’ jail 19 offences under the Migration Act. It is illegal to give unregistered migration advice, provide false or forged documents and misleading information to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
All those providing this advice must be Registered Migration Agents. (RMA).
Australian Border Force (ABF) Acting Assistant Commissioner, David Nockels said.
“This significant sentence by the court sends a clear warning to people that migration and criminal fraud is a very serious offence which carries severe penalties,” acting Assistant Commissioner Nockels said. “In order to avoid being a victim of migration fraud, people seeking migration advice should ensure they use only registered migration agents.”
This outcome came after another prosecution of Mr Charanvir Charanvir, who was jailed for four years for similar offences.
How do you avoid being ripped off in this way? Every person who is registered in Australia as a Migration Agent must be qualified and meet strict criteria. They must hold your fees in a special controlled bank account. Every registered Migration Agent must display their registration number called MARN (in our case 1385515) on all advertising. With this you can check if they are legitimate with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority. Can you trust overseas visa businesses? If they are NOT Registered Migration Agents they are not qualified to give advice. You may get a cheaper price but the chances of getting a visa are low and you could be ripped off like the people in the story above.
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