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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/12/13 10:20 AM, Bentley, Andrew
Charles wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Doug<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">As
far as I can tell this has nothing to do with the Indian Dr.
Haq specimen scam and has very different motives associated
with it… I am not sure I understand the motivation behind
this kind of request and whether it is indeed fraudulent.
Surely no-one would issue a visa to anyone based on an email
saying “sure, you can visit my collection”???<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
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The "Letter of Invitation" requirement is SOP for India and Nepal,
evidently, and J-1 visas are granted often enough on that basis that
the scam continues, just like Nigerian princes offering millions of
dollars. Consider the following response from 2009:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white">(3)----------<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:navy">Along
this same line I received a request a few years
back from an ichthyologist from an African
country wanting to visit the Canadian Museum of
Nature in Ottawa. He wanted to come and study
curatorial techniques (all costs would be
covered by a grant he had received) and so I
prepared a letter of invitation. All went as
planned until the day before his scheduled
arrival. At that time I received an email from
a hotmail address claiming to be the visitors
sister and telling me that the visitor had been
in a car accident and would not be coming the
next day so I was NOT to bother going to the
airport to meet them. In retrospect I feel
quite sure this was simply a scam to get illegal
entry into Canada (and perhaps from there to the
USA). <br>
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The scam just has to work once for every few hundred attempts, as it
did in the case above, for it to be worth their while to keep trying
it. All it costs them is a little time to compose realistic-sounding
e-mail messages and target potential suckers. As I mentioned, when
this came up before, someone gave details on how and why a letter of
invitation is converted into a visa, but I can't find it in my
archives. It would be helpful if someone knows and can share this.<br>
<br>
Peace,<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html">http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html</a>
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82</pre>
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