Immigration fraud at Hastings racetrack cited in federal documents
Credit to Author: Gordon McIntyre| Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2019 17:10:15 +0000
Federal documents related to the raid at Hastings Racecourse paint a picture of a provincial official engaged in fraud, Mexican nationals knowingly working without proper documentation, and horse trainers who asked few questions about paperwork or their new hires.
The documents show 30 racetrack workers from Mexico — who paid the B.C. official to issue them false documents so they could work at Hastings Park — had a variety of excuses for not having the proper papers.
One said he was visiting his son, one that he came to Canada to box. Some said they were on holidays, some said the application process for work permits had gotten too complicated.
“That was a mistake, not applying,” Javier Olalde-Angel said through an interpreter at an admissibility hearing and detention review on Wednesday. “Before they used to send us an invitation, but since 2014 it became more difficult to get a work permit. … That is why many of us didn’t come with a work visa.”
His testimony is contained in Canada Border Services Agency documents that spell out the reasons behind the group arrest shortly after dawn Monday at Hastings Racecourse.
A B.C. inspector who expedited the workers’ permits and licences for payments of between $600 and $1,000 each, according to the documents, was an employee of the provincial gaming policy and enforcement branch based at Hastings Racecourse.
The gaming branch had begun investigating the rogue employee last fall after the Attorney General’s office received complaints, believing he was “engaging in fraud,” Danielle Jensen, an enforcement officer at border services, wrote in a declaration.
“Specifically, foreign workers are presenting themselves to this … inspector as horse owners on their applications for registration.”
The rogue inspector would submit the workers’ applications through a B.C. government computer system. Once approved in Victoria, the inspector would issue a registration card listing the workers as owners, who don’t require federal work permits. On a subsequent day, the inspector would go back into the computer system and change job titles to the jobs the men were doing, such as groom, a job that does require a federal work permit.
The B.C. gaming branch “also identified approximately nine registrations in which the … inspector has been subbing photographs on registration cards so that the person whose face appears on the registration card is not in fact registered … at all,” Jensen stated.
That inspector no longer has access to the computer system or the office at the racetrack, the B.C. government said on Thursday.
At least one trainer was also implicated, according to special constable Steve Gregoris, the lead investigator for gaming branch.
Gregoris said he “received information that a trainer at the racecourse paid $1,500 for two Mexicans to be registered and that they suspect the … inspector is receiving remuneration for the fraud,” a border services document said.
Other testimony at the hearings include:
• One worker knowingly misrepresented himself as a jockey in order to obtain a work permit.
• Another knowingly engaged in undocumented employment and his only means of support was undocumented employment.
• Another was in Canada as a visitor and did not possess a federal “Employment Authorization.”
• Another was working on a registration licence that was originally issued to another person.
• Another did not tell authorities that he had been arrested and detained for approximately three months in Toluca, Mexico, for robbery, five years ago. B.C. requires criminal record checks before working at a race track.
• Adan Cruz Villegas “lives in the barn and stated that he is paid $500 to $700 cash every two weeks, but claimed to not know who his employer is,” one document said. Cruz Villegas was questioned about some of his visible tattoos, including three dots on his left hand — a common prison tattoo — “but he denied gang significance and stated that he has never been affiliated with a gang.”
Craig MacPherson, a well-known trainer at Hastings, had one of his employees detained. He described him as a hard-working man who pays Canadian taxes and had not paid the rogue B.C. inspector.
“He’s to check in on Monday (with CBSA and Immigration) to see if he has to go home right now,” MacPherson said. “He’s a well-liked guy around here. He’d be the model person of what you’d want from a foreign worker, totally upstanding. … No one’s been hiding from the government in any way, he’s here doing all the things he should be doing.”
For the fifth straight day, no one from the provincial Attorney General’s office, the ministry that oversees the gaming branch, would speak on the record about the case.
The inspector under investigation is a member of B.C. Government Employees Union, Danielle Marchand, press secretary to the union’s president, confirmed, but said she couldn’t discuss anything else citing provisions of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
CBSA spokeswoman Nancy Pham confirmed that neither the Vancouver Police Department nor the RCMP is involved in the investigation.
— with a file from Derrick Penner