With an admission letter to a Quebec university in hand, Aminata flew from Benin, west Africa, to Montreal with $2,000 in her pocket to fulfil her dream of pursuing higher education in Canada.
Back in 2022, she’d connected with a man who she says positioned himself as a consultant who could process her documents and submit her university and immigration applications.
But not long after she landed in Montreal and made her way to Chicoutimi, Que., she realized it was all a scam.
She had not been accepted to university. She did not have a scholarship. Her immigration papers were fraudulent and based on a falsified acceptance letter.
“My dream turned into a nightmare,” Aminata said.
CBC is using a pseudonym to protect her identity because, due to her falsified immigration papers, she is without legal status in Canada.
Clasping her hands while sitting in her apartment in Chicoutimi, nearly two years after the ordeal, the 30-year-old Beninois still doesn’t feel settled or safe.
“I’m living with the fear that at any time I can get deported,” she said. “This is not a life.”
Aminata doesn’t want to go back home now, saying she would have to completely “start again” in Benin.
Aminata was not the only victim of the scam. CBC News has spoken to another woman who says the same man who presented himself as a consultant took her money after he was hired to submit her university applications.
According to an expert, not only is this type of fraud becoming common, but prospective students in Africa are among those targeted by scammers in high numbers.
For Aminata, it all started when she came into contact with the consultant through her uncle. She said the pair agreed on $4,000 before the price for the agent’s service went up.
“I gave him all my money,” she said, adding that it totalled about $7,000 in the end.
She sent along the required documents — her birth certificate and diplomas. Within a few months, she was emailed an acceptance letter into the master of organization management program at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi.
She says the man also managed to get her the Quebec Acceptance Certificate (CAQ) — the province’s mandatory document which permits international students to apply for a study permit.
Although she considered deferring her acceptance to stay in Benin to save up money, she says the agent, who is also from Benin and studied in Chicoutimi, pressured her to book the flights and start school immediately.
“He asked me to not worry. [That] everything is under control,” she said.
But something was off. She arrived in Montreal on Aug. 28, 2023, and in mere days, the whole scheme unraveled.
They paid a consultant thousands to help them go to university in Canada. It was a scam
She says the consultant suddenly informed her he was deferring her acceptance. A fellow Chicoutimi student in whom she confided about her situation told Aminata she needed to go to the administration to sort out her status as a student.
She says the consultant wouldn’t answer her calls but when she finally got him on the line, he became defensive, started shouting, and told her not to give the school the documentation and acceptance letter he provided.
“They told me that they feel like I have been scammed,” she recalled the school’s administration saying, adding that she found out her real application file was open but incomplete. She says the consultant had submitted fraudulent paperwork.
“That day, I was feeling like this is not true,” she said.
Fatim only realized she was a victim of a scam after seeing Aminata’s story in a Radio-Canada report.
“Her story was the same as mine,” said Fatim, who travelled to Quebec from Benin in July 2023.
CBC News is also using a pseudonym to protect her identity because of her concerns over her immigration status.
She arrived with the intention of starting university in Chicoutimi after receiving an admission letter and documentation from the same consultant as Aminata.
Upon arrival, she says the consultant abandoned her despite promises to help her defer her acceptance.
“I didn’t know it was fraud but I had felt that something was not normal,” said Fatim, who says she still feels overwhelmed and “imprisoned” by her situation.
Her father, who was responsible for connecting with the consultant, sent him thousands of dollars to help secure the university applications — even selling a property to afford it.
Knowing the effort and money he put into helping her, Fatim says she tried to keep the truth from him after her schooling fell through.
“One day my dad said, ‘my girl, tell me what’s really going on?'” said Fatim. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
She said once her father found out what happened, his health took a turn for the worse.
“He felt responsible for getting his daughter into trouble without even knowing it.”
He died in December 2024, and Fatim couldn’t get back home.
Although she considered returning to Benin to her family and husband — whom she hasn’t seen in nearly two years — she says she wants to build a life for herself in Canada and prove to Immigration Canada that this was truly not her fault.
She says the agent had previously told her she could apply for asylum in Canada to secure her immigration status — a step she said didn’t feel right. She says she didn’t want to abuse Canada’s system.
Fatim recalled telling the consultant, “I want another way out of this mess you’ve gotten me into.”
CBC News contacted the man who Aminata and Fatim say scammed them. In a brief phone call, he denied allegations that he is an agent who helps people submit applications to university. He also denied having taken any money.
CBC has not been able to reach him for follow up questions or an interview. His number has since been deactivated.
The way things are, victims of immigration fraud often have little recourse, says Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst based in Vancouver.
He says it’s also more difficult for people to do their due diligence because they are less familiar with the Canadian college system.
“The communication infrastructure is not the same,” he said. “And literally some people have sold the farm to get to Canada to study. Now those are tragedies.”
In his career, he says scams for immigration foreign study permits have become as “common as Vancouver rain.”
The Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) says 44 cases of fraudulent admission letters were identified by the registrar’s office between June and December 2023.
While most of the individuals who received these letters did not show up on campus, 12 did, said a university spokesperson in an emailed statement.
In cases where individuals showed up on campus with a CAQ document and study permit obtained through the falsified letter, UQAC says they took the “necessary precautions to advise the authorities.”
UQAC says several calls were made to Quebec’s Ministry of Immigration, Francization and Integration to question the validity of the CAQ paperwork obtained by these students.
In an emailed statement, the ministry told CBC that in the past few years, admission letters containing “irregular elements” and “inauthentic” parts have been detected in several files.
“Although these situations remain marginal in relation to the overall volume of requests processed, they are rigorously monitored,” read the statement.
The ministry also confirmed that in order to act as an immigration consultant, an individual must be recognized as such by the government. When an immigration consultant obtains this recognition, his or her name is entered in the register of immigration consultants.
The name of the consultant both women used is not part of the province’s list.
In 2023, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced that investigations uncovered nearly 1,550 study permit applications were linked to fraudulent letters of acceptance. This number also includes those that were detected two to three years prior, it says.
These applications were intended for designated learning institutions (DLIs) — a school approved by a provincial or territorial government to host international students, read the statement.
“In most of these cases, the fraud was detected and subsequent applications were refused,” it said.
IRCC says the verification process for acceptance letters requires that DLIs verify the authenticity of all letters.
To date, the improved letter of acceptance verification system has intercepted more than 10,000 potentially fraudulent letters of acceptance, IRCC says.
Both Fatim and Aminata have blocked the consultant’s number and are being represented by the same lawyer in their attempt to find a solution for their cases and move forward.
Aminata says when she was first informed about the scam, she told UQAC that the agent who falsified her acceptance was a student. UQAC confirmed to Radio-Canada that he was then expelled from his university program.
Aminata applied to the university again, contacted the prime minister, the federal minister of immigration, provincial politicians, the anti-fraud service and local police.
“After that, there was a silence,” she said.
Saguenay police confirmed to Radio-Canada that they could not take on Aminata’s file because the fraud happened overseas. In an emailed statement, it says “the victim was referred to her embassy and local police force.”
“They asked me to talk and I talked and nobody is doing anything,” Aminata said.
“I still have that little bit of light … hope that things will change.”
