DR: Among 10 countries with most frauds to enter US

SANTO DOMINGO. The Dominican Republic is one of the ten (10) countries whose citizens commit the most frauds in order to obtain a visa or residence in the United States.

This was what Anya Brunson, the deputy manager of the Anti-fraud Unit of the Consular Section in the Dominican Republic revealed yesterday during the presentation of the new anti-fraud campaign called in Spanish "Ten cuida'o con ese maco" (roughly: Be careful of that trickster!) which will try to make Dominican aware of the issues so that they can be legal when they request a visa, which is at the consulate in this country.

According to Brunson the most common frauds are: declaring a larger salary than real when requesting a tourist visa and presenting false marriage certificates when requesting residence visas.

But there are many gullible people that fall into the net of "mafiosos" that pass themselves off as officials of the consulate and are fooled by false visas or false documents.

According to William Weissman, the Consul General, each year they detect thousands of false maneuvers, which he said "is a serious problem in this country, in comparison with our consular operations in other countries."

"It is a very, very serious problem and because of this we have created this campaign," Weissman said.

The campaign was presented yesterday at the Centro de los Heroes Station of the Santo Domingo Metro, and has caricatures by humorists Raymond Pozo and Miguel Cespedes which were chosen because of their close identification with the Dominican people.