Australian Immigration Daily News

Migration Alliance has been provided with the following witness statement by Hanhong Chen (aka Ashley) and given permission to release the information and police statement in an effort to encourage others to seek justice:

Full statement to Surry Hills Police: 20150220095356313.pdf

"I came to know the Abel Prasad man since early March 2014, and this man came to the 375 Crown St Newsagency to approach me and claim that  he can do various visas with 100% successful rate such as subclass 572/573/574/457/186/187/188 visas at low cost, and he claimed to own a law firm named SYD VENTURE CAPITAL PTY LTD. Later I visited his office and came into knowledge of his associate staffs such as XXXXXXX and YYYYYY [real names removed for privacy reasons].

The offer from Abel Prasad sounded very alluring to me with his promise at low cost and short period of visa processing time, and he claimed that he can speed up the migration processing time within 2 weeks and no more than 2 months upon my transferring initial payment of his consultancy fees. Therefore I made decision to appoint his law firm as my visa application agent. I started by paying him around AUD $17,000.00 including some cash payments around AUD $5,000.00 for him to initiate my migration case as what he told me.

Then after about 2 months without doing any work on my migration case, Abel Prasad requested a second payment for his expenses in entertaining immigration officer and he claimed that the immigration officers were happy with a payment of AUD $16,000.00, then they will issue an approval letter of my migration visa. I felt reluctant and frustrating, and I'd never heard of such a fee before, yet Abel Prasad upheld all my migration personal files and my wife's information, thus I decided to transfer the amount of AUD $16,000.00 to his company trust account as requested by him.

Since I paid the second payment to his law firm until late July, I didn't see any submission of my visa application. Although I urged him from time to time to submit my visa, Abel Prasad refused to do so and requested some other cash payment from me during our meetings. I felt hopeless and contacted XXXXXXXX and YYYYYYYY to verify my application status, and they confirmed that my case was not submitted yet due to Abel's holding of personal information and files, furthermore Abel Prasad warned me not to liaison with his staff and any of his lawyers.

In early August, Abel Prasad threatened me during our meeting and certain mobile phone communication, that if I failed to pay him another AUD $18,000.00 as for the final consultancy fees for his service including the migration visa fee. Shall I not transfer the final payment within 72 hours, he would inform immigration to deport me out of Australia permanently. I was deeply terrified by what Abel Prasad conveyed to me, and I transferred part of the final consultancy fees AUD $8,000.00 to him, at the same time I resorted to other migration lawyers, and they briefed me that what Abel Prasad did to me for my migration application was unlawful representation and Illegal diversion of client's money out of his law firm's trust account.

I will provide any attachments that relevant and gain your kind assistance in resolving this hassle caused by Abel Prasad, as well for preventing this man to further jeopardize the image of Immigration Department of Australia and tarnish other migration applicants' cases. I will provide relevant evidence and email/message communication records in the following emails  for your reference and soonest action in this issue."

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