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Canadian High Commission distances itself from scam
Canadian High Commissioner: Francois Montour
The Canadian High Commission has distanced itself from the recent scam involving a tour coordinator who tricked 42 Guyanese of millions of dollars by promising them a trip to Canada.
Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana, Francois Montour, told members of the media yesterday that the situation is one which is very unfortunate, as he made it clear that the High Commission had no involvement in such a scam.
According to Montour, the High Commission received no information from the immigration department in relation to that specific matter. As a matter of fact, the mission was only made aware of the scam through the newspapers.
As such, the Canadian High Commission is currently in the process of verifying whether any of the documents used in the scam was official correspondence from the Commission.
“We’re looking into making sure any of the documents used to produce the fakes were not official documents from the High Commission and at this point, what I have been told is that those were fake documents made by the fraudster,” High Commissioner Montour said.
Meanwhile, taking into consideration the seriousness of the matter, Montour sounded a warning to the Guyanese people to beware of these fraudsters, since the High Commission is the only entity responsible for granting Canadian visas.
“At this point, I would certainly advise the population to be extremely prudent and careful about promises of visa and promises about travelling easily to Canada, because visas can only be given through the High Commission…Nobody has any mandate in this society to provide visas to Guyanese who wants to apply,” the High Commissioner told media operatives.
At the same time, Canada has not been able to ascertain if the fraudster has any legal status in the country or not.
On Thursday, Kaieteur News reported that the fraudster, Neil Stephenson, tricked 42 Guyanese of US$720 each, after they were promised a trip to Canada.
One of the victims of the multi-million-dollar fraud, Colin Woolford, told this newspaper that Stephenson was the man who was organising the tour and he turned out to be a clever con artist who was able to squeeze thousands of dollars from his victims.
Woolford said that Stephenson who normally organise trips to a number of destinations including Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, owns W.D.A.Y.L Tours that they later found out it was unregistered.
Woolford, said that Stephenson was organising for the group to visit Canada from June 16 to June 30, last, a trip that was supposed to be sponsored by the Canadian Heritage Trust in association with Centennial College.
The man initially told them that the tour could only accommodate ten but in their quest to go overseas a total of 42 persons approached Stephenson to be a part of the trip.
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