DV LOTTERY LAUNCHED IN ACCRA (Page 28)

10/9/2008
Story: Mary Mensah & Charles Benoni Okine
THE Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service will soon embark on a swoop on Internet cafes which use their set ups to defraud unsuspecting applicants of the US Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery.
It said it would also not spare those who portrayed themselves as visa contractors and charged various sums of money under the pretext of helping people to apply for the free lottery being organised by the US State Department to offer immigrants from all over the world the opportunity to live and work legally in the US.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Mr Felix Mawusi, Second in Command at the Commercial Crime Unit of the CID, said this at a news conference organised by the US Embassy in Accra to launch the 2010 DV Lottery (DV-2010).
He said some persons had turned themselves into DV Lottery contractors, going round tertiary institutions across the country for information on students which they later altered to suit their purposes.
DSP Mawusi said those contractors forced marriages of convenience on winners and when they were granted visas they seized their passports, demanding money before they released them.
He said it was wrong to engage somebody to enter the lottery on one’s behalf and advised all prospective applicants do so themselves.
The Head of the Consular Section of the US Embassy, Mr Michael Evans, warned that the Embassy would not allow criminals to hijack the programme which was instituted in 1990.
He said 4,000 Ghanaians who won the lottery in 2008 had already been issued with their visas but the 7,000 who won it for 2009 were yet to be screened.
He advised prospective visa lottery applicants that winning the lottery was not a guarantee that they would be automatically issued with the immigrant visas.
Mr Evans said for the first time, applicants for the DV-2010 lottery could check the status of their entries online.
"The State Department warns applicants to be wary of fraudulent schemes asking for money, fraudulent e-mails or websites posing as official US government sites," he warned.
He said each person might enter the lottery only once, saying that spouses might each submit an application.