Fake US embassy shut down in Ghana

A fake US embassy operated by "Ghanaian and Turkish organized crime rings" and a Ghanaian lawyer, posing as consular officers that operated for "about a decade" printing counterfeit visas in Ghana's capital city Accra has been shut down, a US official said on Monday.

According to officials say, several suspects have been arrested, though others remain at large. A raid at the venue led to the recovery of 150 passports from 10 countries and visas from the US, India, South Africa and the European Schengen zone.

US State Department spokesman in Washington, Mark Toner said no one was believed to have entered the US suing the fake visas which were reproductions based on genuine travel documents the con-men had obtained.

“This fake embassy made and printed counterfeit visas using expired visas as a blueprint,” Toner said.

“It’s very, very hard to counterfeit US visas these days… and so this operation failed.”

"This was a criminal, fraud operation masquerading as a fake US embassy," he added.

Those running the operation were able to bribe corrupt officials "to look the other way", the State Department said.

Toner said the fraudsters obtained Ghanaian and other passports with expired US visas that were either lost or stolen. Using them as a prototype, they then produced counterfeit visas.
 

Toner also noted that "It's very, very hard to counterfeit US visas these days", including numerous security features such as biometric information to prevent fakes from being used.

According to Toner, to the best of the knowledge of the State Department, no one had even been caught at the US border attempting to enter the country with such a document.

"Frankly, the counterfeit visas were pretty poor quality," he said.

He claimed that people who obtained them must have realised they weren't going to be able to use them to get into the US.