Britain's Biggest Visa Scam | UK Border Force | Episode 1 | FD Real Show

[Music] it's estimated there are over a million illegal immigrants living in britain many choose britain because they believe it's a soft touch they know the scams to stay on illegally and avoid deportation the uk border agency has 38 enforcement bases whose job it is to track these people down today a team in glasgow are carrying out a raid on the royal india restaurant in one of the city's most affluent areas they have intelligence the restaurant is employing illegal workers i love from immigration if you just see my colleague there hi there guys from immigration you want to put everything down for us please make your way out here make your way out the team find five workers and the owner of the restaurant an employer must make checks on his staff to ensure they are allowed to work in the uk he can be fined up to ten thousand pounds for each illegal worker found on his premises once i find out what's happening with my colleagues in relation to your question then i'll sit and have a chat with you and we'll establish if they were working here or not okay first to be questioned about his immigration status is the waiter what nationality are you sharing do you have a passport i don't have anything you don't have a passport how did you get into the country without a passport i came and i lost my passport the scam of coming into the uk as a tourist and staying on to work has given this man up to four years of illegal employment if his colleague was hoping to pull off the same trick he wasn't banking on meeting the enforcement team so soon how long have you been in the uk two weeks do you have permission to work how long have you been working here ideally one day for this indian man found in the kitchen an encounter with immigration while at work is nothing new do you have a passport why don't you have a passport uh i am terminator in your office ibrox you're reporting to immigration at the moment why are you reporting to the office have you been spoken through my immigration before kilimanjaro this this gentleman was actually encountered by myself on a previous visit to a restaurant on the opposite side of glasgow about eight weeks ago he was then arrested at that point and served papers as an illegal entrant and those papers would have told them he's not permitted to work so here we found them yet again working illegally when the team arrested the worker last time they could not find his passport and so were unable to remove him from britain all they could do was release him on bail the documentation that was issued to you when you were last encountered by immigration must have told you you were not allowed to work you're not permitted to work i'm starting this morning you're starting this morning the men do not appear to be phased by being caught working illegally and this worker has a familiar tale to tell okay how long you been in the uk 19 the man has also recently been arrested by the team and he too was released on bail and told not to work how long have you been working here then today how much you get paid no pay if the man is not being paid he must be working as a volunteer it's certainly a story the owner wants to promote what's the point okay if you don't pay him any money no what does he get okay no no that's fine but would you pay him any money if he was here tomorrow no no so what does he get in return for his employment you're gonna have the food you know that's nice so he gets foods basically as the illegal worker arrested last week is already on bail and the team still don't have the documents they need to remove him from the uk all they can do is release him once again show us how scared they are obviously caught him last week yeah yes sir you actually my letter to the people and say look you're not allowed to work in our country legally what'd he go what does he do he goes straight back out and get another job okay how long were you intending to work for months years until you get caught or here uh-huh no no four o'clock started yeah that's it you were all going to work today i just couldn't don't believe you no more working okay yes time for you to go kilometers parveen kumar off the premises the man has now twice seen the consequence of getting caught working illegally he knows that until the enforcement team get hold of his travel documents it pays to exploit the system and to find another job okay need to come this way okay and to the frustration of the officers the same goes for the other illegal worker already on bed but the owner could be hit where it hurts with a potential fine so far of 20 000 pounds little wonder then that he claims the men were just visiting okay so did you employ a girl went no okay so again he was encouraged in your kitchen dressed and chef white yes i don't know you know because they might think of my girlfriend okay what's happened is if he's encountered on your premises and he's witnessed in your kitchen preparing food he's working whether that be a return of food on a ton of money okay okay off you go don't come back here okay so you're not permitted to work okay off you go the men already on bail may be free to go but the remaining two suspected illegal workers may not get off as lightly [Music] if they are arrested and the team find their passports they could be removed from the country within days [Music] 500 miles away the uk border agency and the police continue their investigation into the sharma's fake visa business after a dawn raid jatinda sharma and his two wives are brought to southall police station evidence found in their house suggests they're involved in manufacturing bogus certificates for visa applicants i think you're all aware that we're quite successful this morning we've uh recovered approximately 50 to 100 um stamps in uh in all different sorts of identities and for all different sorts of companies which tend to suggest the occupiers are involved in some sort of fraud of deception against the home office and we've seized bank accounts which show that they're making money from their enterprises i think some of the accounts have got 50 000 some got twenty thousand pounds in them can you turn to your left place so you're facing that wall there the officers have plenty of questions to put to the suspects but first they want to look for more evidence the team believed that crucial documents will be held at uni visas the business sharma runs with his wives rocky and neelam we've just arrived at phase 2 of the operation this is the business address of univisas this is where the three people who arrested at the home address work um so we've got a search warrant to search this property again looking for any items of documentation of interest specifically immigration related on the surface univisas is a legitimate legal firm giving advice to overseas applicants for uk visas the teams suspect it is a front for a racket producing fake documents to help thousands of people stay in the uk illegally it isn't long before they discovered just the sort of papers they're looking for i'm excited about that oh yes it looks as though these are applications for visas for chinese nationals to come here and study english that's what it appears to be anyway it's not something that a genuine student should need any kind of immigration advisor and so why does this need to involve univisas in another room there's more damning evidence with potentially alarming implications another stanford company to legitimize fraudulent documents as we've found at the home address you've got um fraudulent documentation for dentists and doctors etc if these people are successful it does make you wonder are these people working illegally in the medical industry are looking after vulnerable people the apparent scale of univisa's activities is even greater than the investigation team had suspected and now after a three-hour trawl the officers find evidence that leave little to the imagination sharma has emailed a supplier of fake educational documents on behalf of a client who wants to stay in the uk it's fantastic we need a pg diploma for the following candidates he's not studied anywhere he needs international graduate students so we have to show some course that's fantastic that is the killer isn't it he's very fussy and wants some accredited uk oh fantastic he's clearly paid a bit more money for that that's uh that's what we've been waiting for isn't it brilliant he's not studied anywhere he's been in the uk for three years but his leave is running out so he needs to get onto the igs is the international graduate scheme and this is a scheme supposedly to keep quality graduates in the uk they can switch into employment so we have to show some course might be a diploma in business administration from july 05 to october 6 and then the postgraduate diploma so clearly that's a request for a certificate so that it matches in with a fictional study history but in the first sentence there hasn't studied anywhere so it's clearly it's a lie to facilitate the person's um permission to stay in the country combine that with the stamps that they've got next door and the stamps from the home address i think they'll be saving a long time in prison quite honestly at the royal india restaurant the enforcement team have had to release two known offenders already on bail now it's time to deal with the two other illegal workers okay carpal through here you're now under arrest okay as a suspected immigration offender don't have to say anything anything you do say maybe noted maybe using evidence do you understand you're under arrest okay this man is in the uk as a tourist and says he's been here two weeks yeah he claimed he came here with a visit visa just for a holiday but he's now working all his friends families relatives are probably doing it tell them come to britain you know and you can earn some good money so they'll know how the system works i've been doing it for years and the owner should know he can't employ a holidaymaker from india even if the man does just turn up at the door and offer to help so he came up to the back door just wandered up the back door and said i've got through his visa and that was that police has walked and says can we help you out and all that you know i said well have you got other documents can you what can all that you know you say i'll bring that tomorrow like you know okay pay him any money no no i mean like i said it's only kevin a couple hours ago right now right sharon come on okay you've been arrested okay because you on suspicion of being an immigration offender the owner also denies employing the waiter who has overstayed his tourist visa by more than three years okay sir we're going this way but you're going to do what we tell you to do okay because what you must understand as you're arrested right sorry about it the team have found four illegal immigrants at the restaurant they do not believe the owner's excuses and serve him notice that he could be fined up to 40 000 pounds four meals have been named on this okay none of them have permission to work in the uk i understand you said they're not getting paid money but any kind of employment will be paid or unpaid is still classes working and it's still illegal if they've got no permission to do so okay of all the employees found at the restaurant only one is entitled to work he has indefinite leave to remain in the uk so many restaurants employ illegals you know the thing is you've got your status now yeah because lots of people have a status but they can't find work and it's hard for them so that's what we are trying to do protect the local population people who you're entitled to work here unless other people like you can get a job okay good luck then you understand what we're doing the team don't want to have to release on bail the two men they've arrested today but in order to detain and remove them from the country the officers must find their passports we don't have a passport for him we cannot remove them we have to apply to indian embassy to try and get a travel document which can take up to six months we can't detain them for six months so we release them and with the cedar he goes straight back to work again the holiday maker is cooperative and is given an address where he's staying with relatives how are you doing i'm from immigration service can we come in and have a fight with you thanks all right thank you but the waiter is being less helpful he claims to have lost his passport and he can't remember his own date of birth why can't you remember your birthday why can't you remember your own birthday no no no you're telling me the truth yeah yeah uh you said something about a date at birth on your passport what do you mean by that why are you trying to remember the date of birth of your passport not your own day at work the man knows the less information he gives the harder it is to remove him from the country he has given an address where he claims to live but he says he's never been given any keys this male has turned up for his first day of work today wearing the clothes that we encountered them in with only a mobile phone in his possession and the boss failed to get him to work this morning i had no other possessions at the restaurant it's a common ruse illegal immigrants know that if they're arrested at work officers won't have the warrant to forcibly enter and search their home for a passport there's nothing up here all these sort of flats are owned by the owners of the restaurants and they'll move the staff around i've searched houses like this before where i've seen one bloke who's been actually living in a cupboard but the reason why it's so transient is because they move from restaurant to restaurant usually depending on whether they've been raided by immigration the team searching for travel documents for the holidaymaker have had more luck we've got a passport for the subject which makes a big difference to us chances are we'll be keeping a hold of them and removing them back to india the passport reveals the man was twice refused a tourist visa to the uk having finally got one he's been found working illegally after only five days in the country the waiter's evasive tactics have paid off all the team can do after questioning him is release him on bail until they have the papers needed to remove him from the country and that's why so many want to come here because they know in britain they know how the system works and you know it's not a it's not good advert to deter people who aren't british not to come here you know okay the holiday maker is detained for six days before being removed back to india for employing four illegal workers the owner of the royal india restaurant is fined twenty thousand pounds coming up the passenger at heathrow with something to declare i have to follow the rules yes you have followed the rules but the uh college has give me a deceit to be and a setback for the team going after the sharmas missing millions 30k yeah committed by nilam to india while they were in custody that's not good [Music] most of the 70 000 people who arrive each day at heathrow have a perfectly good reason to come to britain whether it's business pleasure or simply coming home but some people are trying to get in and stay in the country illegally officer lisa lee is one of heathrow's 1700 uk border agency today she stopped a student returning to britain after spending five months back home in pakistan mr qureshi you come with me i have your ticket passport here okay sir all right he says he's here to take exams but a quick call to his college throws his story into doubt they say he's never attended at all officer lee wants to search the passengers bags as they might reveal what he's up to in the uk how much is here 2080 pounds so you have a job here uh yeah what were you doing here sir yeah mini cab office is a controller controller and a mini cab cover as a student the man is allowed to work as long as it's only part-time he's adamant his main reason for being here is to study the only problem is to be a genuine student you need a genuine college i i go to in my college and every day but they are not studying they are only cashing the price please give me a gesture it's my future okay so yeah well we'll talk about that in a moment yeah yeah we'll talk about that in a moment in your future yeah yeah i'm very hard working so i know you're anxious i know you're nervous but you need to wait for me all right please give me a gesture of justice if you follow me yeah he's very nervous he's almost pleading with me to let him in so as i said to you i will talk to you in a moment okay he said a few things about his studies i'm going every day but they are not teaching or something so i need to try and work out what he means but he's clearly very worried he actually asked me if i was going to deport him and i said well i don't know what will happen yet just you know bear with me and answer my questions the passenger is desperate to be heard he wants officer lee to investigate his college please give me a justice i am a real student justice is a big word all right so you have to bear in mind yeah that i have to follow the rules yes you have followed the rules but the college has give me a deceit to me that's kind of interesting isn't it he's claiming that um the college is bogus in that he was attending when he was meant to attend and they were not running classes now they've said to us immediately we rang them he's never attended the problem he's got is he stayed here for six months without doing any appearing to do nothing and he's now saying he's coming back to find another college so either he's not being completely honest or the college is officer lee must find out who is telling the truth it seems the college is sticking to its guns backing up its claims in writing what i have here is a fax from the college which says that he enrolled on a 12-month course for an advanced diploma in business admin which should have commenced last march 2008 they claimed to have written to him concerning his poor attendance but they never received any response and so they've removed him from their register which essentially means he has no place to study so now we need to get to the bottom of his allegations as well mr qureshi and to make sure his allegations are understood the passenger has asked for an interpreter how long did you attend the college for i uh honored off jata six months i went on and off and they didn't teach anything there feels like lady and they took my cheating fees off of me how much did you pay them 1600 pounds okay we spoke to your college and they gave us this i'm there are absolutely no classes that go on and i haven't received any letter from them okay the difficulty i have is that you were here for six months and you did nothing about this college they had more money and they were asking me for more money i didn't have any further access to any funds and i was afraid that they were going to report me to the home office and remove me when you arrived today you told me that you were coming back to continue your studies and that you would take exams in march why would you say that if you're not going to attend that college eventually i would have enrolled at a different college but in the meantime i didn't want to be stopped by immigration so you lied i remember yes i did so you sought to secure your entry to the uk by employing deception if i had no money i had no other way sorry life may not be good i've always worked hard my father couldn't get transparent patient my father is a kidney transplant patient oh my my mother is old and my mother is old because in any sense i'm not going to go back because my my father would get have an art tank he's saying don't ruin me help me if the passenger is to avoid being sent back home he needs officer lee to believe his allegations and to accept that he's here to find a new college [Music] jatinder sharma and his wives neelam and raki have been in custody for the last six months awaiting trial they are accused of submitting fraudulent visa applications on behalf of foreign nationals hoping to work in britain d.c cornwell and his team have sifted through 90 000 seized documents and have unearthed the biggest immigration scam ever seen in this country sharma and his wives forged papers to secure visas for more than a thousand people through their company universes univisas have generated income tax return forms they've generated education forms and they've also generated pay slips and employment records and there's proof the rubber stamps found at the univisa's office have been used to endorse the bogus documents so that's the stamp office of the joint income tax officer which is this stamp here now our scientists have studied that impression and the stamp and they've they've concluded that there is no doubt the stamp has made that impression univisas charged would-be foreign workers up to four thousand pounds a time for fake documents to back up their applications the police believe the company may have raked in more than three million pounds most of it still unaccounted for it's down to dc andy cornwell and dc simon prothero jones to track down the missing money today they are at court where sharma rocky and neelam are due for a plea hearing all three have already pleaded not guilty but they have good reason to change their minds the judge has made it clear that today is the last day that a discounter sentence is on offer and without a doubt for all the defendants that any discount which they get from an early plea is going to be substantial we we are talking years off their sentence as a result of that things are getting fairly heated in there between the uh between the defense teams and the prosecutor um it is very fraught but there's a lot at stake rocky and neelam stick with their pleas of not guilty but jatinda sharma tries to strike a deal with the prosecution he's willing to plead guilty on one condition he was prepared to plead guilty provided we excluded his house in in southall from any sort of cash confiscation that kind of set us thinking really why why is he so concerned about his house it led us to sort of muse that perhaps there's a load of cash stored somewhere in that house which is why he doesn't want that the house the subject of any confiscation and the hoodie bar will enforce it the only way to find out is to go back to sharma's house to take a closer look and it would appear that their business over the 18 months it was running has turned over probably three million pounds now if you look at that and we say maybe a million pounds of that has gone in in expenditure over the 18 months we've frozen assets in their bank account of 400 000 so that leaves a short 1.6 million we've got a warrant to search the address okay the reason we're back at the home address today pretty much is that we're looking for anything which could have been me it could be as simple as a big pile of money underneath the floorboards it could be bank documents relating to an account which we didn't know accounts shares stocks in in somebody else's name anything which is going to lead us to the outstanding funds i still think there's a lot more money in this house somewhere so we're going to go back in lift floor balls if we have to go up into the loft lift the insulation just absolutely every nook and cranny you've got to look around the house around us it's a state here's a man that had hundreds of thousands of pounds in the bank this one house with a very limited amount of equity and is what he's desperate to keep hold off why is he so desperate to keep hold of her house which is literally filthy and falling down you know i mean ripping out floorboards and insulation doesn't reveal the cash the team are looking for oh oxygen fresh air i don't know opening post addressed to neelam unearths bank accounts the team didn't know about um punjab national bank we found a bank account in the name of nilam for this account which we weren't aware of up until now contains just over twenty thousand pounds so that's of interest again there's another forty fifty sixty thousand pounds at least um so sheila has the best part quarter million pound in the bank accounts the arrest of neelam does not appear to have stopped large sums of money being moved between her accounts 30k yeah committed by nilam to india so that explains her another thirty thousand thirty thousand on this one transferred into another of her bank accounts or yeah interesting though the last one was on the 17th of the 12th 08 17th of the 12th yeah while they're in custody while they were in custody that's not good even though neelam has been in prison awaiting trial some of the illegally gained money in her accounts has been squirreled away in indian banks but there is still over a million pounds missing this year has been worth its weight in gold literally to us we immediately traced tens and tens of thousands of pounds i suspect once i take all this paperwork away with me sit down at a desk and go through it in a lot more detail it may well help me trace hundreds of thousands of pounds and that's getting towards the sort of figures that we're looking for we've had a fantastic result really i'm pleased attendance pleaded to absolutely everything i know he's guilty he knows he's guilty he's finally done a decent thing and admitted it there is a real sense of satisfaction of actually seeing um jatinder stand in the dock in the cult and finally admit his guilt yeah he has done all of this stuff wrong he's lived a good life out of it he's made an enormous amount of money hugely satisfying but still a lot of work to do the officers still have the painstaking job of preparing for a trial it will be for a jury to decide whether rocky and neelam helped sharma to perpetrate britain's biggest visa scam coming up things get desperate for the pakistani student at heathrow throw me i can't do anything sir okay the rules are there for a reason and the verdict is in for the shamans [Music] at heathrow the pakistani student is waiting to hear if he can come into britain at first he said he was here to take exams now he's accused his college of being bogus and claims his intention is to find a new college officer lee refers the case to chief immigration officer sarah dyson he can't explain why in the six months that he was here before going to pakistan he has made no serious attempt to re-enroll or to find another college well i mean i think just by doing that impacts on his credibility doesn't it and whilst he says no no this college are just taking money off me they've never provided me with any lessons i don't that's a good enough argument no and that shows that he's not a genuine student who's committed to studying in the uk and also he lied as soon as he got to the desk out there he gave a complete rubbish story to secure his entry to secure his entry yeah so you have to question his intentions don't you yeah okay so i need to have a chat with you okay come with me okay my chief immigration officer has decided that we are going to cancel your visa this is because we're not satisfied that you have been making any attempt to study in the uk and that you lied when you came to the desk on arrival yeah from the information you've given me i will make sure that is passed on to our college the people that look at colleges okay so they will be looked into i can promise you that please i can't do anything sir okay the rules are there for a reason i can't just permit you to come into the uk as a student because you're not a student you never have been you must understand the reason why we have to enforce the rules it's hard to say whether he's been a victim or not from the fact that he maintained throughout the interview that he'd paid money in good faith and had not received what he'd paid for but he may well have been a victim the minute we then contact the college concerned it could be that they didn't want us investigating them so they've denied all knowledge of him who's to say who's telling the truth and who isn't it's just the bare facts are that he didn't study when he was given a visa to study that's why it's been cancelled the passenger was detained overnight and put on a flight back to pakistan the next day officer lee handed the information about the suspected bogus college over to colleagues in the investigation team it's been more than a year since the uk border agency and police raided the offices of univisas and discovered fraud against the home office on a massive scale company boss jatinda sharma has already pleaded guilty well alice one of the many striking things about this case is the arrogance of the man who ran the scam he was so confident he could get you into this country illegally he offered clients a no win no fee option today after a four-week trial the jury is expected to deliver their verdict on sharma's wives neelam and rocky rocky she's offered a number of defenses you know if one fails we'll try the other if that fails we'll try the other first of all i didn't know anything about anything but then if i didn't know or if the if the jury believe i did know about it then i'm going to offer a defensive marital coercion neelam's defense is just i at the time i wasn't aware of any wrong doing if it happened and she has kind of accepted it did happen then it's down to uh it's down to iraqi and jatinda it's for the jury to decide if they're telling the truth by gambling on a trial the women risk receiving tougher sentences if found guilty it takes four days of deliberation before the jury reaches a majority decision we've had a brilliant result today we've now had all verdicts returned on rakhi and nilam nilam was convicted on the money laundering charge iraqi was convicted on everything all of the charges against her we've just come out of court tinder's been in the dock with them and all three have been sentenced the jury accepts that neelam was not behind the fraud but she is sentenced to four years in prison for laundering some of the three million pounds that poured into universes raki conspired with sharma to defraud the home office by submitting bogus visa applications she is sentenced to eight years in prison jatinda sharma is given credit for his early plea and is sentenced to seven years thanks to their criminal activity there could be thousands of people in the uk who are not entitled to be here uni visas it's obviously an immigration consultancy there are hundreds of those operating throughout the capital where and throughout the country and a lot of those will be running similar sort of scams so what we've really dealt with over the last 12 13 months is is i believe the tip of the iceberg it's been a long and complex investigation but it's not over yet there's still the missing money to track down and seize as for jatinder sharma and his two wives they'll be deported to india after they've served their sentences [Music] you

Channel: FD Real

Views: 388,830

Rating: 4.6423206 out of 5

Keywords: Free Documentary, Reality Shows, Show (TV Genre), Documentaries, Factual Entertainment, Factual Television, non-fiction, Best factual series, FD Real, FD Real Show, UK Border Force, Bill Nighy, Illegal Immigration, Illegal Immigrant, Brexit, Boris Johnson, Bollocks to Boris, UK Politics, Get Brexit Done, Vote Leave, Take Back Control, no border no nation, No Borders, Nigel Farage, UKIP, Brexit Party, United Kingdom, UK, uk immigration, Asylum, Police State, Police, ACAB

Id: uU9igFl1QKM

Length: 37min 43sec (2263 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020