October 25, 2007
US Visa scams & Florida Brits on TV
US Visa scams & Florida Brits on TV
A recent television documentary featured US Visa scams where majority of the victims were Brits. One of Britain’s most popular documentary TV programmes ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald’ bought into question the immigration policy where Brits who had bought property in Florida and invested in the region were not guaranteed the right to live in the United States. The documentary showed a couple who ran a company with American citizens as employees and had settled into Florida life but lived in uncertainty every two years about their status in America.
Mick Leggett, a city businessman, is awaiting trial in the US over an alleged visa scam. According to the show, he is one of those who tried to con Brits out of their money. One case showed John Sewell paying a company Royal Development $120,000 in May of 2004 after selling his property to invest in the venture which he was told would guarantee his Visa. The 50-year-old investor has yet to see returns on his money or the promised visa and has since been embroiled in a legal battle with Mr Leggett. According to the documentary, Sewell is extremely pleased that Leggett is being investigated. “I want to see Mick Leggett go down for a very long time because he has totally destroyed my family,” claims Sewell.
The US Embassy responded saying, “We regret some British citizens appear to have been victims of unscrupulous individuals offering investments purporting to qualify applicants for E visas.
Law enforcement investigations are continuing, and we urge any individuals who believe they may have been the target of a visa scam to report this to the Embassy.”
According to the statement, the embassy began to examine all E visa applications more scrupulously when they learned of these apparent scams. “This review, combined with a substantial increase in E visa applications in the past two years, resulted in a temporary backlog of cases. However, we anticipate waiting time for initial review should decrease to 12 weeks by the end of May 2007.”
Posted on: Florida
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