Nzokanhyilu
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 19, 2007
- 1,078
- 101
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00560/College-2_560175a.jpg
Former pub became the centre of a web of bogus colleges
With its humble setting, the building might seem an unlikely nerve centre for an elaborate, multimillion-pound fraud that made a mockery of UK immigration policy.
In the rush hour, cars crawl south from the centre of Manchester along Stockport Road past line after cramped line of Asian retail outlets, some less grubby than others.
Among the fast-food shops, Haj travel agents, halal butchers, curry houses and money-exchange outlets is a former pub, reborn in 2006 as Manchester College of Professional Studies.
Here, two young men from a town in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan in Britain on student visas started a scam that would earn them a small fortune.
The Times has evidence that in 15 months from October 2006 they enrolled 1,143 foreign students, most Pakistanis, and sold bogus college qualifications to enable another 654 to extend their stay in the UK.
With each student making average payments to the college totalling at least £1,000 in many cases it was far more those running the operation are thought to have banked almost £2 million in less than two years.
By the time the college closed last summer, to that total of 1,797 students could be added a further 1,181 would-be international students who had been sent letters of admission.
That was a remarkable achievement for a college with only three teachers, which during its existence gave lessons from three small classrooms to at the most generous estimate no more than 130 genuine students. Others may have wanted to study, but found when they arrived that the course on which they were enrolled did not exist because the college was validated to teach only eight of the 55 diplomas and degrees that it advertised.
Most students, however, had no intention of entering a classroom. They were in the UK to earn as much as possible for as long as possible.
The colleges huge intake soon gained such notoriety within Manchesters Pakistani community that it became known as Pathan College, a reference to the language of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
If the Home Office is to believed, it was also not long before word of the magic carpet to Britain reached the exporters of worldwide Islamic jihad.
The Times has established that eight of the ten Pakistani students most from NWFP arrested in Manchester and Liverpool last month over their alleged links to an al-Qaeda network were, on paper, students at Manchester College of Professional Studies.
.............Read More on that link. Check link ya picha.
Former pub became the centre of a web of bogus colleges
With its humble setting, the building might seem an unlikely nerve centre for an elaborate, multimillion-pound fraud that made a mockery of UK immigration policy.
In the rush hour, cars crawl south from the centre of Manchester along Stockport Road past line after cramped line of Asian retail outlets, some less grubby than others.
Among the fast-food shops, Haj travel agents, halal butchers, curry houses and money-exchange outlets is a former pub, reborn in 2006 as Manchester College of Professional Studies.
Here, two young men from a town in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan in Britain on student visas started a scam that would earn them a small fortune.
The Times has evidence that in 15 months from October 2006 they enrolled 1,143 foreign students, most Pakistanis, and sold bogus college qualifications to enable another 654 to extend their stay in the UK.
With each student making average payments to the college totalling at least £1,000 in many cases it was far more those running the operation are thought to have banked almost £2 million in less than two years.
By the time the college closed last summer, to that total of 1,797 students could be added a further 1,181 would-be international students who had been sent letters of admission.
That was a remarkable achievement for a college with only three teachers, which during its existence gave lessons from three small classrooms to at the most generous estimate no more than 130 genuine students. Others may have wanted to study, but found when they arrived that the course on which they were enrolled did not exist because the college was validated to teach only eight of the 55 diplomas and degrees that it advertised.
Most students, however, had no intention of entering a classroom. They were in the UK to earn as much as possible for as long as possible.
The colleges huge intake soon gained such notoriety within Manchesters Pakistani community that it became known as Pathan College, a reference to the language of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
If the Home Office is to believed, it was also not long before word of the magic carpet to Britain reached the exporters of worldwide Islamic jihad.
The Times has established that eight of the ten Pakistani students most from NWFP arrested in Manchester and Liverpool last month over their alleged links to an al-Qaeda network were, on paper, students at Manchester College of Professional Studies.
.............Read More on that link. Check link ya picha.