Ahmedabad advocate seeking Canada visa scammed of lakhs

With high aspirations of moving abroad, and the countries tightening their immigration rules, various cases of applicants being scammed of more than ₹50 lakh have been reported in Ahmedabad.

An advocate intending to permanently shift to Canada with his wife and start a visa consultancy firm was conned by a consultant working at an emigration company.

Canada dreams came crashing down

As per a complaint filed on Dec 21 by Bapunagar resident Mahesh Patel, his daughter Hitesha lived in Canada, and his son Sarjan, an advocate, planned to shift there with his wife, Hemanshi.

For this, they approached Winny Immigration, based in the city’s Law Garden area, on Nov 2, 2022. Upon contacting the firm, they were assisted by Hetal Trivedi, a counselling team leader at the firm.

An estimate of ₹5.5 lakh was given by her for a permanent residence (PR) visa for the couple, which was assured to be generated by September 2023.

However, despite fetching ₹8.56 lakh from them instead of the earlier estimate,  citing various fees and charges, Trivedi had not yet initiated their process to shift to Canada.

Conned over opening immigration firm

On top of that, Sarjan was also keen on opening his own immigration firm, similar to that of Winny in Canada, and approached Trivedi for the same.

She assured them of assistance with this venture and fetched money over various licences and permits, even naming Hemanshi, Mahesh, and his wife, Pushpa, as the directors.

However, upon verifying the permit files at Udyog Bhavan, Gandhinagar, the family learned that their files had not reached here at all. They then showed up at Winny Immigration’s office in August 2023 and learned that Trivedi had fled with the hefty sum of around ₹32 lakh transferred to her through cash and other means.

It was also revealed that Trivedi had conned three other people - Maulik Patel (₹3.94 lakh), Sanjay Patel (₹5.45 lakh), and Bhavna Patel (₹16 lakh) with the same modus operandi, all while working at the firm.

Navrangpura police station has registered a complaint against Trivedi and initiated a probe into this matter.

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