18 held for allegedly faking domestic helpers' employment documents

Ayra Wang

The Immigration Department has arrested 18 people from a syndicate providing forged employment documents to obtain foreign domestic helper visas for overseas workers.

This allowed the workers to illegally seek employment and work in Hong Kong.

The arrested individuals include a 63-year-old woman believed to be the mastermind of the operation. She has been sentenced to 41 months in jail.

The other arrests involved 14 illegal foreign workers, including 5 men and 9 women aged 33 to 51. Six of these workers have already been convicted and imprisoned.

Two employers and a 59-year-old Hong Kong man were also arrested. The local man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for assisting the syndicate in obtaining personal information and false documents.

According to Chan Chi-wai, Chief Immigration Officer of the Foreign Domestic Helpers Special Investigation unit, the syndicate had been operating for 4 years and earned over HK$1 million.

They posed as a foreign domestic helper agency and submitted visa applications using forged supporting documents, such as electricity bills, water bills and bank statements that contained identical information across multiple employers.

"The department found that in different applications submitted by the syndicate, supporting documents all had the same error," Chan said.

"For example, the electricity bill and water bill of different employers all had the same number and fee and there were also the same wrongly written characters in bank statements of different employers."

The department identified around 40 related cases involving 26 overseas workers. Over 100 pieces of evidence were seized, including mobile phones, computers, as well as a large number of false documents and contracts.

The illegal workers who wanted to work in Hong Kong but did not qualify as domestic helpers paid the syndicate HK$40,000 per person to apply for the visas.

"The mastermind would then obtain personal information, including ID copies and fake documents, to submit the fraudulent applications," Chan said.

When immigration officers suspected the authenticity of the documents, the applications would be withdrawn.