The Foreign Service Journal, September 2005

ing issuer of C1D transit visas to maritime workers in the world — a statistic that becomes even more critical when one considers the much-discussed challenge of maritime security. In addition, the already substantial business and tourist travel from this area is growing 20 percent per year. Fortunately, despite being one of the busiest consular sections in the world, Mumbai could today be fairly iden- tified as a “medium-threat” fraud post. But like other posts in India, alien smugglers and document vendors are increasingly targeting us, and their creativity and duplici- ty seem limitless. Accordingly, it is essential that we aggressively combat fraud in Mumbai (and the rest of the country, for that matter) to keep it from joining the ranks of notoriously high-fraud posts, with all the deleterious effects this could have on the international travel so important to India’s economic growth — and, indeed, to our own. It is against this backdrop that Special Agent Colin Sullivan, Mumbai’s first A/RSO-I, arrived in 2002. He wasted no time. In addition to working to ensure the security of the consulate general and its employees (including serving as acting RSO for the summer transfer period), he quickly developed close and effective cooper- ation with his consular colleagues as he focused on fraud prevention. He was able to turn several investigations by the post’s Fraud Prevention Unit into arrests by local police. In the process, he developed an excellent working relationship with Mumbai police officials. We expect his successor to expand that success to police forces in other key areas of our consular district, including Goa, Gujarat and Pune. In fact, at a recent event, covered by the local papers, RSO Special Agent Scott Messick and Colin Sullivan presented an award to beaming offi- cers at Mumbai’s Sahar Airport Police Station for “the success and cooperation [it] and the U.S. consulate have shared in combating document fraud in India.” Indeed, in the past year, Mumbai police have arrested nearly 20 visa applicants presenting fraudulent docu- ments or engaging in other serious misrepresentation at post. These arrests have had a significant deterrent effect, not only here but in places like Hyderabad, a city that has emerged as a major source of fraud for posts throughout India. Mumbai’s A/RSO-I, and the A/RSO-I in New Delhi, Special Agent Matt Wolsey, recently worked together, and with Hyderabad police, to arrange for the arrest of one of India’s leading document vendors — a criminal whose abilities were so sophisticated that his application packages led to dozens of visa issuances to bogus appli- cants at all of the India posts before the final identifica- tion of this fraud ring by the consular section in Mumbai. We are expecting more arrests in Hyderabad from that investigation. The Hyderabad case is a good example of how the A/RSO-I and the consular section work together to pre- vent and stop fraud. Indeed, hundreds of applicants affil- iated with this document ring were ultimately refused visas. It was the Mumbai Non-Immigrant Visa Unit’s ini- tial identification of possible fraud that led to an investi- gation by the post’s Fraud Prevention Unit. Once a definitive trend was established, the A/RSO-I entered the investigation as all four India posts reviewed thou- sands of previous visa issuances. (Locally engaged staff and eligible family members at all our India posts deserve a special mention for their hard work and the innovation they brought to developing quick and effective means for reviewing these thousands of files.) The A/RSO-I and the fraud prevention officer briefed line officers on the key indicators to be on alert for, and Mumbai police were immediately called in to arrest any applicant presenting documents that a consular officer and the assistant RSO could definitively prove were fraudulent and had been acquired through the Hyderabad vendor. Immediately following these arrests, the number of applicants presenting these fake document packages dropped off, and the A/RSO-I then effectively worked with counterparts countrywide and through police in Hyderabad to secure the arrest of the document vendor. He even secured a copy of the vendor’s hard drive con- taining vast amounts of fraudulent data, corporate logos, letterhead, U.S. visa application forms, tax forms, Indian passports and more. Special Agent Sullivan’s briefing of the consular section on the contents of this vendor’s com- puter was an eye-opener and really drove home the seri- ousness of the challenge we face together. An Invaluable Resource As a law enforcement officer, the A/RSO-I provides a F O C U S 72 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 Anthony F. Renzulli is the fraud prevention officer at U.S. Consulate General Mumbai.