US Embassy Acts On Fake E-Mails Plot

June 2, 2001

The United States embassy has issued an alert over a con man out to cheat visa applicants by offering fake e-mail appointments.

In some cases, dates of the e-mail message are sometimes tampered with so applicants can jump the queue while in other cases the messages are entirely faked.

Visa officials say most of the falsified mail was from a single source that had "acted as an agent in securing visa appointments".

The revelation comes a month after the facility was launched by the embassy's consular section to allow positive visa applicants to book interview appointments through e-mail following constant complaints about the difficulty in booking the appointments by phone.

Yesterday a statement from the embassy said though the new service was working well, people had began showing up with forged e-mail messages. It added that the agent's activities had been halted.