The department of immigration has stepped up its scrutiny of working holiday visa applicants after detecting that many applicants have been defrauding the system by making applications under different identities.

In one case an applicant acquired five Working Holiday visas illegally by using different identities. DIBPs prevailing systems were unable to detect the fraud until the fifth application according to a DIBP media release.

DIBP states that it started scrutinising these visa applications more closely for identity fraud in the recent years after it became aware that some young visitors were unlawfully trying to use the Working Holiday visa (subclass 417)—the most popular visa for younger visitors to Australia—to secure ongoing work.

The visa is available to nationals from 19 countries and regions and can be used to visit, study and work in Australia for up to a year. If a Working Holiday visa holder spends three months or more doing designated approved work in regional Australia during their visit, they may be eligible for a second Working Holiday visa for an additional year.

Since 2013, in its efforts to detect people trying to gain unlawful entry to Australia, the department has been using an innovative automated form of discreet profiling that checks every application for a Working Holiday visa.

The people identified by the department were discovered making changes to their true identities in their home countries in an attempt to subvert Australian law and to travel a second time without having completed the regional work requirement. Some were attempting to travel on a third Working Holiday visa under a new identity.

Using new profiling techniques that do not require visa applicants to provide any additional information as part of the application process, the department has identified, cancelled or refused more than 130 visas by applicants engaged in identity fraud.

The department has been monitoring the fraud offline from visa processing systems to ensure a high level of accuracy and to ensure that the visa application experience of genuine travellers will not be adversely affected. This offline process is scheduled to move to an online fraud monitoring process in late August 2014, integrating the profiling with visa processing systems to enable the department to detect fraud in real-time.

DIBP has plans to use its IT fraud-tracking innovation in many other areas of visa application monitoring over the coming years.