Fake admission letters given to some international students at N.B. university

Université de Moncton’s international student association is issuing a warning after a small number of international students hoping to attend the school received fake admission letters from fake recruitment agencies.

Association president Jovial Orlachi Osundu said some international students arrived on campus in September with fake acceptance letters.

“They weren’t really aware that they had false papers,” she said.

Osundu said the process to come to Canada is complicated and expensive.

“Some people know that, and they will try to play on this to scam a lot of people,” she said, adding that young people leaving home for the first time may be taken advantage of.

“Most of the time, students trying to come to Canada, they are newly graduated, they are freshly graduated,” Osundu said. “They are starting their adulthood, so they’re not really used to the process (of) going overseas.”

She also said some international students have also fallen victim to rental scams while trying to find housing.

“So the owner will ask the student while they’re still in their country to pay the deposit, and when they pay the deposit, the owner will just block them,” she said.

Osundu said hopeful students should try to get in touch with universities directly rather than solely relying on third-party agencies.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Université de Moncton said there were three cases of admissions fraud reported to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada this year. The students had applied for second-cycle admission through an agency not associated with the school

Since those three students had already obtained housing and were eligible for admission, the university decided to admit them.

As well, the school said 40 requests for admissions were refused because of fraudulent documents.

International students make up more than 35 per cent of the student body at Université de Moncton.

— with files from Suzanne Lapointe