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Biggest ever fine set for a migration scam

Australian permanent residency in nine months was promised to unsuspecting foreigners who seemed to have readily fallen for the scammers advertisement which promoted a training program as "The Quick and Easy Way to get PR".

A Melbourne man and his company that duped almost a hundred people of some $800,000 in the scam, are now expected to be ordered to refund the money to their former clients and pay penalties in excess of $1 million dollars, according to a report on Channel 7 News.

The court heard that between 2012 and 2013, Radovan Laski and his company Clinica International operated an elaborate scheme promising to provide clients with Certificate III cleaning training that would lead to a job in regional Australia and qualify them for a permanent residence visa.

But Mr Laski failed to find many of the workers the promised jobs and sponsorship. Some of the overseas workers allegedly duped by Mr Laski were promised jobs in skilled working environments but ended up being sent to work in regional abattoirs.

Last year the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the foreigners agreed to pay between $4000 and $40,000 with some even taking up loans with interest rates of up to 50%. A witness in the case, Lauris Fahey reportedly said that she had heard Laski bragging about how he took advantage of migrants looking for jobs. He reportedly tried to delay some of the hearings against him in the hope that his clients visa would run out before the claims could be finalised. In other cases, witnesses said that he made claims against clients who attempted to get their money back. Laski - who in 1997 was named in Federal Parliament as a conman – reportedly warned one worker in an email that ''I will be down on you like a ton of bricks'' if the worker complained to authorities.

The SMH said that, this is one of the most blatant examples in which a company “has been able to continue operating despite numerous complaints to the Immigration Department and other agencies.”

Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald, the chief executive officer of the Consumer Action Law Centre, Gerard Brody, said he had written to federal and state government agencies to warn them that lax policing and regulation was enabling crooked migration and employment-placement businesses to flourish.

"There is a huge and growing market of overseas students and workers who are convinced to hand over huge amounts of money to these traders who operate in this unregulated space,. There needs to be a much greater regulation to get the shonky operators of the system." chief executive officer of the Consumer Action Law Centre, Gerard Brodyhe.

It is illegal for anyone but a registered migration agent to offer migration advice.

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